


Eruri Drabbles

by jin_bestgirl



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Domestic, Drabble Collection, Emotional Baggage, Falling In Love, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Love, M/M, Mutual Pining, Nightmares, Sad and Happy, Sexual Tension, Sharing a Bed
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2021-02-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 01:01:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 27,643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27046156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jin_bestgirl/pseuds/jin_bestgirl
Relationships: Levi/Erwin Smith
Comments: 124
Kudos: 504





	1. Introduction

Hey guys!

I’ve been having trouble writing consistently recently, so I decided I was going to try a challenge where I write a little Erwin/Levi drabble based off of one word from a random word generator. I was originally going to stop at 30, but I think I'll just leave it open-ended and write as many as I feel like writing! Gonna give a general M rated warning because there’s bound to be some sex because there’s gotta be. Also- please feel free to drop words in the comments if you have any requests! I'll write a drabble based off of any word you give me. :)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy whatever stories come out of this! :) Love these guys more than anything. 


	2. "Easy"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Day one prompt- "easy."

“Easy!” cuts the command through the thick of the air, and it’s an order, though Levi doesn’t hear it as one. It’s too distant, too ephemeral, gone as quickly as it had come and begging the question of whether or not it had sounded at all.

Flecks of ash shift through the gray air like snow, dotting the cobblestones and settling into the congealed puddles of black-red blood between them. Everything is heavy and dark, spinning.

Levi is lost in his own mind. His breath rips raggedly from his lungs, chest heaving, pupils small and darting. The world reels out from under him and nothing hurts, there is only the furious roar in his ears and the way his heart punches against his ribs from the inside out- _you are alive, you are alive, you are alive_. With a wild surge of something feral he presses the cool silver of the blade into the convulsing throat beneath him until beads of blood pop up to stain the metal and a choke squeezes into the open air. How easy it is to do this, to strip a body of its life. It almost makes him want to laugh.

“Easy,” comes the same voice again, closer now, and something sparks in Levi so suddenly that his breath hitches in his lungs, a gut pull toward obedience to that low, familiar tone.

_Erwin._

The thought grounds him, steels him even as blood drips down through his hair and into his eyes, even as his mind whirrs in a mess, even like this. Levi blinks awake, easing the pressure away from his victim’s throat just enough to let him breathe again. The man writhes beneath him like a disgusting, terrified animal as sensation and awareness return to Levi in a slow and steadily blooming way. Pain spikes in his knees where they’re pressed into the stone and against the warm, living chest below him. He’s dizzy from a blow he can’t remember, right eye stinging with the sticky wetness of his own blood. As feeling sinks into his bones he breaks from the cloud of bloodlust, lifts his eyes to find Erwin approaching with what’s left of his squad.

Erwin looms in the weak light, gilded around the edges from the fire billowing in the building behind them. His eyes are chips of steel, glinting dangerously as he closes in on the morbid scene Levi has created, but as he nears and Levi’s own gray eyes lock onto him, something softens in the expression, almost too subtle to be noticed. Levi always notices, even like this.

“We’ll take it from here, Levi. Thank you.”

Erwin’s voice is firm but gentle, a caution and also a relief. Their gaze holds and Erwin’s eyes speak volumes of understanding- Erwin understands that Levi can’t let go, not yet, not while the hilt is gripped so tightly in his hand and the man who had taken out three of their cadets lies prone below him. Levi’s eyes flicker back down to the gurgling mess below him, the coward wriggling like a worm under the pressure of his knee. How easy it would be to slide the blade across his throat, like slipping a knife through butter, to forsake the reward of information for the satisfaction of watching the fresh blood spill into the crevices of the sidewalk, drawing out the life of the traitor. Levi teeters precariously on the line of self control, and for a moment his wrist twitches, fingers tightening; for a moment he almost does it. And then he raises his eyes once more to find Erwin, and with that comes the end of vengeance.

There is a patient will in those blue eyes, eyes he knows like his own. _Easy, Levi,_ they say, calm and trusting- trusting him to make the right decision. Levi had made a promise a long time ago; he cannot let those eyes down.

He stands, pushing harshly up against the miserable man’s chest, stealing as much satisfaction as he can from the dull crack of a rib and the gurgled cry that comes with it. As he lifts up, the rest of the bloody haze shakes away from him and clarity rings through his head like a bell. He’s returned to his body, the danger is over and so is the electricity. Now there is only exhaustion, and pain.

Levi sheathes his blade and begins to make his way past Erwin- this fresh restraint won’t last if he stays here long. He needs to walk somewhere, fast and far, walk off the death and the blood and the way he has given up his one opportunity to enact revenge for the kids’ stolen lives.  
He halts as a warm hand finds his shoulder, brief and fleeting but firm as he passes. He turns his head only slightly to find the same grounding blue eyes gracing him with an expression of gratitude, of deepest comprehension.

“You did well, Levi,” Erwin says quietly. Kindly.

“I know,” Levi dismisses, and he walks on, Erwin’s hand falling away. His throat is like glass, too tight to say any more, but he knows Erwin’s understanding pervades his cold shoulder again and again. Later he will come to Erwin’s quarters and they will kiss quietly against the door and they will forget about today together, but for now Levi walks without a destination, resentful of Erwin’s ability to influence his every action, and grateful.

❊

“Easy,” Erwin utters, low and dangerous, and Levi freezes in place. Cold dread creeps up his spine, seeping into his limbs, and regret, dark and sickening, drops into his stomach. The line with Erwin is difficult to perceive but as he comes to his senses, snapping out of the anger, Levi suddenly senses it far behind him.

Stations often fall away when they are alone together, titles feeling ridiculous after baring their private horrors to each other and indulging in stolen moments of tender passion. Around other members of the regiment they uphold their offices well, and it is no struggle to play the part of a loyal subordinate when Erwin commands such respect. Levi had vowed to follow Erwin anywhere in a time that feels a hundred years old, and not once has he strayed from such intention. Even so, the turning of the years has brought with it a nonchalance and a touch of insubordination from Levi, and while he often edges on defiance it is a rare thing for Erwin to address. They both know Erwin would be a fool to doubt Levi’s devotion, and so he allows Levi to criticize him with a leniency Levi does not let go to waste. They have been informal for so long now, so relaxed in private intimacy that when the threat comes now, dark and sudden, Levi is jolted in a rush of backward years to the days when he did not know Erwin at all, when he perceived him like this and only like this: the commander capable of taking his life.

They stare at each other across the space and something completes its shift, huge and terrifying. Suddenly Erwin is no friend to Levi, no lover; he is the commander of the Scout Regiment and he looms over Levi in the small office, hand pressed into the wood of the desk, stolid and cold. Levi hovers there in his shadow, unnerved beyond expression.

He can’t recall his exact words, not even as he stands here on trial for them now. One moment they had been bickering about the latest expedition beyond Maria, Levi digging in low blows despite his better judgment, fueled by the mismanagement of his squad that had nothing to do with Erwin’s command. Stupid and unjustified, he had leaned into the nastiness anyway because he was pissed and because Erwin could take it, because he had perhaps come to take for granted the way Erwin always seemed to take it when Levi was pissed, deserved or not. But he had leaned too far, had let the rush of irritation carry him out with the tide and he had found it at last- the line that, until this point, had been nothing but a mythical uncertainty.

Erwin’s eyes flash and he waits, maybe for an apology, perhaps for Levi to go, and Levi oscillates between the options, unmoving. Backpedaling words begin to build behind his lips but he bites down on them, half because the words aren’t adequate, half because some writhing, defiant part of him still feels justified in his outburst.  
They stare for a long moment at each other, the breach of their usual dynamic raw and obvious in the silence. And then Erwin speaks, tone quiet and loaded, twisting like a knife into Levi’s stomach.

“Watch your tone, captain,” Erwin remarks in a deadly voice that jars Levi like he’s been slapped. His instinct urges him to bite back, to sink lower in his insubordination, but even as the fire flares in him a dull guilt begins to twist in his abdomen, too. It grows and washes through until his righteousness is extinguished by the truth of things: Erwin is right, of course Erwin is right, the way he almost always is.

“I’m sorry,” Levi works out with difficulty, jaw set, chest tight. Suddenly it is difficult to meet Erwin’s eyes, but he forces the contact anyway because it is deserved, and because he has handled tasks more difficult than this. “I crossed a line.”

Erwin watches him levelly for a long moment and Levi holds there, bold in the admission of his violation, and the distant thought occurs to him that only Erwin can evoke this from him, this blatant retraction, this concession of his own wrongdoing. Only Erwin can draw this type of guilt from his chest and confession from his mouth.  


It is quiet and tense and the air is electric. And then, finally, Erwin’s features relax again, and as quickly as he had transformed he shifts back, returning to the man Levi shares private smiles with across the table at briefings, the man he kisses goodnight and good morning again. The blue of Erwin’s eyes turns from ice to sky, and he draws in a deep breath that Levi finds himself unconsciously mirroring. Erwin nods an acknowledgement, and while it is curt, it is also a pardon.

Levi clears his throat and they resume their discussion, falling back into rhythm as if nothing had happened. When Levi finally turns to leave a quarter of an hour later and Erwin reaches forward, sweeps back Levi’s hair to press a chaste kiss against his forehead, the respect that runs between them only deepens in light of the incident, already fading into history. Suddenly inspired to theatrics, Levi stops at the door and turns to offer a half-assed salute, something he hasn’t done in ages. As he closes the door behind him he catches the way Erwin’s mouth twinges into a smile.

❊

“Easy, easy, easy…”

Levi is afloat in the dark, all sense of direction torn from his grasp as he flounders, all thrashing legs and rasping throat, straining against the undefined horrors devastating his mind. Someone is screaming and he doesn’t know who, maybe it’s him, maybe it’s a stranger, maybe it’s just in his head. Everything is black and bloody and Levi is sweating, forehead warm and damp and blankets encircling his legs like vices. In this wasteland of unconsciousness he follows the source of the scream to find it coming from his own throat after all, and even then he can’t stop it. His frantic mind can’t seem to recall why this is happening, why it had begun, why it won’t end even now that he knows what it is.

“Levi-!”

His own name finds him in this swirl of horror and his heart leaps out of his chest at the voice’s familiarity, the relief bringing pricks of tears to his eyes against his will. _Erwin_ , he mouths, and the warm press of fingers around his wrist finds him, begins to pull him from the black hole. Slowly, agonizingly, he climbs into consciousness, gasping awake to find himself tangled in blankets with Erwin’s form close against him, clutching his wrist, tethering him to the real world against the current of grisly dreams.  
Levi swipes the back of his hand across his hot face to find tears mingled with the sweat there, and his insides curdle in shame. Erwin is urging stillness, murmuring sweet words to him but he can’t make them out, heart pounding in his ears, humiliation burning into his chest.

It was bound to happen eventually, given all the nights they had begun to spend together, but some morbid part of Levi had hoped Erwin would be the first to suffer a nightmare in their shared bed, so that when Levi’s turn came he would have earned the right to be weak like this. But Erwin’s nightmare had never come and here Levi is now instead, stomach lurching, and hair plastered damply across his forehead, dizzy and sick in Erwin’s quarters.

“I’m fine,” he lies thickly, making a blind and pathetic attempt to push away from Erwin’s firm grasp. Erwin lets him go, though Levi can feel the reluctance in his fingertips.

“Levi,” Erwin says softly, treating his name like something precious, worth much more than it is. Levi reels on the edge of vomiting for a dangerous moment but manages to hold it back, barely. He’s still suffocating, and makes a weak attempt to kick the blankets off of himself. Immediately Erwin’s focus shifts beside him, and as if Levi were a child, Erwin bends over to untangle him from the twisted mess, carefully extracting his legs from the tangle of covers and sheets. Levi flinches at the initial contact before letting it happen, Erwin freeing him with surprising tenderness and patient understanding. He tries to be embarrassed but he’s just grateful, relieved beyond words as the cool air of the room reaches his ankles, his bare feet, drifting its way up his pajama bottoms and cooling his sweat-dampened skin. He pushes a hand through his hair, focusing in on his breathing, drawing in deep breaths like a fool in front of Erwin.

“I’m fine,” he repeats aloud, unprompted. Beside him Erwin says nothing, but Levi can feel himself being watched and it makes him writhe. He turns his head to chastise Erwin, to tell him to fuck off, to reiterate his stability, but the eyes he finds waiting for him are too understanding for such tall tales. The words catch in his throat when he locks onto Erwin’s expression, doting, merciful. Levi bites the inside of his cheek hard, until the tang of blood rises in his mouth, because there are tears burning in his eyes and he is powerless against the strength of the pull of them. Erwin seems to understand this too, as he reaches out with a care that somehow stops just short of condescension. Levi opens his mouth to express his resentment for being treated with such unnecessary attention, but he can’t speak; his throat is too tight and his thoughts too scrambled to form anything coherent or convincing.

“I’m here, Levi,” Erwin says softly, fingers finding the place above Levi’s ear and stroking softly there, and Levi reaches out to push him away except instead he’s pulling, drawing into Erwin’s embrace instead of extracting himself from it, and suddenly he’s cradled in Erwin’s arms and tears are tracking down his face, hot and defiant against him. He rides out the betrayal of his emotions, body jerking with the effort of keeping the sobs quiet as they tear through him, and Erwin holds him, rocks and strokes fingers through his hair, against his cheek, finding the tears and brushing them away before fresh ones take their place. Levi bites down on his own wrist and wills himself to stop, but this small, grounded piece of rationality is no match for the tide of the nightmare, the aftereffect of the dead faces that had revisited him in his mind, and above all, the tender touch of Erwin against him, the gentleness undeserved.

“Easy,” Erwin breathes, presses the word into Levi’s temple with careful lips, plants kisses in his hair, and Levi clutches onto him with a heaving chest and listens to the word again and again until it starts to make sense.

❊

“Easy,” Erwin murmurs in a thick voice, slurring as he presses his fingers into Levi’s hips, holding him still and open. Levi is beyond control, beyond any attempt to steady himself, to retain his composure. His jaw drops and a helpless sound comes out of him, unbarred and breathless. Blindly he finds Erwin’s wrists at his waist and latches onto them, pulling Erwin closer, deeper, stifling the moans that pool in his throat with each steady thrust.

Levi is unmoored and he revels in it- here, in the candlelit dark, brought to the edge of bliss by Erwin’s warm touches and words of comfort, here in this small room he can be untethered, if only for a lingering hour or so. Here he can pretend to let go of his duty, the dull, stoic pretense, because here he is so wholly known. Each night they spend together is another reminder of it, Erwin pressing the truth into him again and again, _I understand, I understand you._

  
“ _Oh fuck_ -” Levi inhales the words and they hitch on his breath, fevered and uncontrolled. Erwin bends down as he continues on, steady as ever, and kisses the tender place behind Levi’s ear, down his neck, his throat as he tilts his head back against the pillow, skin on fire. Levi releases Erwin’s wrists in pursuit of better purchase, sliding his hands up through the blonde hair he knows so well, damp now with sweat.

Levi’s hips roll up in rhythm to meet Erwin, and he closes his eyes tight, jaw slack, focusing hard on letting it all go. He wills himself to be carried away, far from the bullshit outside, from this corner of the world where the streets reek with blood and death and tragedy lurks around every bend in the road. They are safe in this room, safe and one with each other, and as Levi nears the brink he pulls a wrist to his mouth, presses it hard against his lips to muffle the cry forming at the base of his throat.

Firm but careful, Erwin takes Levi’s wrist as quickly as it had found its way to his mouth, pulls it away again, lowers Levi’s line of defense with gentle force so there is nothing between them. It is into this new space that Levi cries out when Erwin reaches between their bodies to touch him, and he is unable to stop it, the senseless babble that Erwin drinks up with a kiss, dipping down to catch the half-formed words as they tumble from Levi’s lips. Erwin kisses Levi, presses against his mouth and touches him just right until he breaks, jerking and gasping and reeling in a heaven of their own creation. Erwin follows soon after, Levi’s name more beautiful on his lips than it has ever sounded anywhere else.

They collapse together into a mess of languid kisses and trailing fingertips, blissful exhaustion. Levi’s body trembles in the aftershocks and Erwin draws his hand to his mouth, kisses each bruised knuckle and murmurs words of love against his skin. The room is small and dark but it is safe and it is theirs.

It may be a fallacy but in this moment- just as the wick nears its end and the moon peaks in the sky, when the night is quiet and there is nothing but the sound of Erwin’s heavy breathing and pounding heartbeat- for a quiet moment, it’s easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! :) I'll update asap with the next random word! Also- if anyone has any suggestions, feel free to drop words in the comments and I'll write some based off of those, too!


	3. "Young"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So much for updating once a day. Maybe once a week is more like it. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this installment, and as always, thanks for the kudos and comments :)

Levi’s fingertips brush along the nicked edge of the photograph, faded and sun-worn, left by its owner to molder in the passing of years. The boy captured in the picture is small and his head seems too big for his body, like he hasn’t had the chance to grow into it yet. Wide-eyed, dressed in tacky knickerbockers and wearing an expression too big for him, he’s the type of well-off kid Levi would have spat on in his youth. Even so, there is a brand of intensity about the boy’s sepia eyes that commands respect, or at the very least, hints at a depth beyond the implications of his pretentious argyle shirt and his irritatingly neat hair. Levi would recognize those serious eyes from a million miles and a thousand years away. The corner of his mouth twitches upwards, not quite a smile but edging on it. 

“You were short.”

He turns in time to catch the way Erwin opens his eyes and glances over from where he’s reclined against the headboard, bright-eyed and tousle-haired. Levi enjoys watching his comment register in Erwin’s face, the cadet-blue eyes flickering down to the photograph in Levi’s hand and back up to his face again. One heavy eyebrow raises, critical. 

“You’re hardly one to cast judgment regarding height, Levi.”

The blow is delivered in a mild enough voice and Levi ignores the prick of somewhat genuine irritation that follows the words. He had set himself up easily enough, assuming the opportunity was too low and dirty for Erwin to seize, and a part of him twinges in amusement despite the insult, at the way he had misjudged Erwin’s humor. Besides, it’s only warranted after his snooping through Erwin’s drawers so shamelessly. He bites back the _fuck you_ , reparation for the trespassing. 

“Were you always this serious?” he prompts instead, turning his back to Erwin again and blinking down at the ghost of Erwin’s past in his hand. Eyebrows as sharp and stern as ever, the expression they draw into ages the young boy’s face five years, at least. It’s almost laughable, how out of place the look feels on a face as young as his. Vague, meandering thoughts wonder where this had been taken, why and by who, pointless questions brought up by the strange novelty of catching this rare glimpse of an Erwin so young. Levi presses on without considering the words as they slip out into the irretrievable space between them. “What the fuck did you have to be so grim about?” 

It’s a stupid question; Levi doesn’t realize how stupid until the last word has danced tauntingly off his tongue, too careless. Erwin hadn’t lived on the streets like Levi had but his childhood had been far from pleasant. They’d exchanged these sob stories long ago, territory covered and put behind them. Boundaries had never been set in any official way but they typically shirk from referencing the past anyway, an unspoken pact- one Levi has just inadvertently dissolved. 

He bites his tongue now, cursing the inability to draw the question back into his mouth, to swallow it, to think of a better way to say what he had been getting at in the first place. He falters for a moment, scanning his mind for clearer words, better words to draw attention from his misstep, but he can’t find anything good enough to bullshit his way back out of the danger. _Take it as a joke, Erwin, let’s not do this_. The plea is silent; he almost speaks it into reality but he catches it just in time, barring the path to escape against more carelessness. 

When Erwin’s response comes it comes with a tone colored by grim humor, something almost like a laugh alive in his tired voice. 

“You’re right, I should have been more jovial a week after the death of my mother.”

Levi freezes where he stands, the photograph leadening in his grip and keeping good time with the drop in his stomach. It takes a moment for him to find any form of response at all. 

“Shit.”

There is no undoing this encroachment into the land of unresolved boyhood trauma, not as Levi stands so boldly before Erwin, holding a piece of Erwin’s personal history that had, in light of this now, most likely been buried with specific intent. 

_Idiot._

Setting the picture back where he had plucked it from its home in the sock drawer, intestines suddenly twisting in shame, Levi turns back to Erwin again, crossing his arms over his bare chest with a twinge of penitent discomfort. Erwin’s eyes are fixed on the lower left bedpost, though, far from him- a mild expression colors his face, misty enough to warrant the stab of guilt that pokes in Levi’s chest, and the streak of vague panic that follows it.

“I didn’t realize,” he attempts lamely. It’s an apology and Levi knows Erwin will receive it as one, regardless of its actual efficacy. They’ve never relied on words, not in the way most people do, at least. They speak a language of tones and emphases, of pointed eye contact and touches that mean something. It’s code, and it’s theirs, and Levi uses it now, backpedaling with an apologetic swiftness. 

To his relief Erwin seems to jar out of his strange reverie, eyes clearing back to crystal blue as they seek and then find Levi again. He is off, half-distant as if he still has one foot caught in the currant of wherever he had returned from, but part of him is back and Levi thinks he might be safe. 

The way Erwin shifts in and out of thought- coasting between the depths of his mind and the tangible world- is a process breathtaking to watch. Years ago, when he had first joined the regiment, Levi had used to study Erwin during briefings. Dull things, Levi had only extracted enjoyment from them through the challenge of cracking Erwin’s code, an invented game- private, difficult. Following the commander’s train of thought was far from a simple task, tracing the thoughts as they streaked across Erwin’s mind, analyzing the twitch of his brow and the slip of his focus inward and outward and inward again. Erwin’s muttered _give me a moment_ from his place at the head of the table had always signaled small breaks for the other officers, who would straighten their cuffs or lose themselves out the window in the silence, thoughts wandering as they held off for the outcome of Erwin’s own quick thinking. Levi had never cared for the outcome. Instead he would fascinate himself with the process, watching Erwin’s mind at work from across the table, appreciating every delicate shift behind the light eyes, admiring the cogs turning and finding himself in begrudging reverence. With every meeting Levi’s need to understand Erwin’s mind had darkened and deepened until he had found himself lingering too often after them, lounging around in the briefing room and then lounging around in Erwin’s quarters. At some point he had found his way into Erwin’s bed, and it is there he returns now, abandoning all regard to the photograph behind him. 

“It’s fine. You know, it’s funny.” Erwin’s gaze drifts from Levi as he settles across from the commander in bed, draping one arm across the footboard and peering hard. Erwin’s eyes hover at the dresser across the room where the picture nestles, out of sight. Levi frowns, watching memories play behind Erwin’s eyes, just out of reach, maddening in their elusivity. “I don’t even remember who took that picture, or why. I just know when.” 

“We don’t need to-... look, I didn’t mean to pry,” Levi tries again, closer this time to a conventional apology. His guts twist again as Erwin slips back into the fog of private memories before him. Levi silently wills the stupid picture farther away, imagining it disappearing entirely into its graveyard of standard issue socks. Toying with the past has been proven a danger again and again by the times they’ve come too close to touching something best left forgotten. Night terrors, screams in their shared bed, sudden tics and panic attacks- they’ve bared their shit to each other and it’s been ugly. 

“Erwin,” he urges again, and more exigency slips into his voice than intended. It works though; Erwin’s gaze snaps back to Levi for the second time, and Levi watches Erwin take in his features, the furrowed brow he can feel darkening his expression, the set of the jaw he cannot unclench. Erwin’s ever-calculating eyes soften as they flicker quickly across Levi’s face, his own heavy eyebrows twitching together. 

“Hey,” he murmurs, reaching across the space to find Levi’s shin. It’s an odd place for a reassuring grasp but he’s not looking at the dresser anymore and Levi couldn’t give a shit about the unconventionality. Erwin blinks and draws a deep breath in through his nose. His chest, bare and scarred, strong and handsome, rises and falls with it. Levi fights the distraction, the pull toward reverence; he never tires of appreciating small proofs that Erwin is alive. “I’m sorry. I get lost in thought too easily.” 

Levi scoffs because it’s ridiculous, guilt pooling deeper into his stomach. _He shouldn’t be apologizing, you’re an asshole._

“To your credit, you probably weren’t expecting me to bring up your dead mother,” Levi deadpans, his leg muscles twitching under Erwin’s hold. Erwin huffs, barely, the ghost of a dry laugh. 

“Fair enough,” he muses with a hint of darkness, but his expression remains fond and his eyes stay gentle and with Levi, and Levi dares to think that maybe they have just managed to escape tonight’s growing potential for a painful delve into the swirling horror of the past, if only just. _Only just_ is more than enough for Levi.

A brief quiet pervades the room, heavy without being oppressive, but the moments slip by and Levi is unsatisfied, the guilt rocking through him again unpleasantly. The impulse to apologize burns into him but the moment’s severity has lessened just enough to make it feel like a stupid thing to do. But he can’t leave it because Erwin is still too somber for his liking, and so Levi opens his mouth to say something without anything prepared to say. 

“ _I_ have a dead mother,” he blurts gracelessly, eyebrows twitching together in disgust even as the words leave his mouth. Horrified, irritated, he bites down on his lip, the sound of his own voice already playing back in his mind and deepening the general sensation of idiocy. Strange and unnecessary, the words fade with shimmering ephemerality into the same senseless void from which they had come. 

_What the fuck was that?_

Erwin’s eyes widen for a moment, so barely that Levi doubts anyone else would notice the change, and hot humiliation turns in his stomach as he scrambles inwardly for more to say, to bury the statement in context so it doesn’t feel so bare, so stupid. 

He opens his mouth to right the rough admission when Erwin laughs- laughs in his face in the golden, rare way that he does, as if Levi has just told a perfect joke, like he’s just thought of the answer to a riddle that’s been bothering him all day. Flashing, hot irritation floods Levi’s system, drowns the paltry guilt in righteous indignation, and he sits up straight, jerking his leg out from Erwin’s grasp. 

“I wasn’t expecting you to find my dead mother so amusing,” he derides, pushing himself harshly up and beginning to climb out of the bed, face continuing to warm steadily with a mixture of embarrassment and anger. 

“Levi-” Erwin implores, sobering immediately as Levi extracts himself from the tempting give of Erwin’s mattress. Warm fingers close around Levi’s wrist as he struggles to escape the tangle of the blankets and he snatches his arm back to himself. 

“Fuck off,” Levi growls, but Erwin doesn’t, taking hold of his leg again, pressing firmly there to keep him from standing. Erwin may be missing an arm but the one he has is strong, and when his grip tightens against Levi’s bony knee Levi is forced to end the battle to escape. 

“What?” he snaps, horrified to find it difficult to make eye contact. 

Erwin had spent the better part of the last few months encouraging Levi’s vulnerability, nursing his sensitivities and appreciating the darkest parts of him. Never once had Erwin laughed at him, never once had he made him feel ashamed for sharing something, even if the words had gotten tangled on their way out or he’d come to a wrenching, panicked halt halfway through. The betrayal of the moment twists deeper in him for this, sinks to a new level of treachery. 

When Levi dares to glance daggers in Erwin’s direction he finds an expression gentle and open. Before Levi can make another demand for release Erwin is speaking, with a patient sense of urgency.

“Levi, I wasn’t laughing at you-”

Levi opens his mouth to bite back but Erwin holds up a commanding hand, and Levi’s damn soldier’s instinct halts him just long enough for Erwin to edge his words in again. 

“I was amazed.” Erwin looks at Levi with a reverent, mystified something caught in his expression. Levi teeters on the edge of interruption but he can’t bring himself to it again quite yet, not when he’s being regarded like this. A mix of irritation and intrigue swirls in him, and Erwin presses on. 

“I’m sorry about your mother. That isn’t something I would ever wish for you, and it isn't something I knew about you, though I might have had my speculations. But listen- before you had said anything, for some reason- and I don’t know why, but- I imagined you saying those exact words. And then you opened your mouth and you did- you echoed the words right out of my mind.”

Levi blinks, frowns, eyes flickering, searching through the genuine blue of Erwin’s. His heart beats quick and hard against his ribs as he calculates like Erwin calculates, rapidly, appraisingly. He waits for Erwin to continue because it looks like he’s going to. 

“I was laughing at the way our minds seem to work together,” he continues, lifting his gaze from Levi and settling somewhere in the middle distance, lost in thought. “I was shocked.” 

Erwin breathes a little huff out of his nose, then drifts inward again for a moment, like he’s mulling over some hypothesis written out on the backs of his eyes. “But not really, I suppose, now that I think about it. It isn’t new information, is it, that we might be able to read each other’s minds?” 

Erwin’s gaze finds Levi’s again and it’s suddenly clear that the question is genuine, like Erwin is asking for Levi’s help in deciphering the nature of their strange, profound relationship, and something about it is so open, so sincere, that it spurs something to life in Levi, something tender and uncomplicated. He leans forward wordlessly to press their lips together, slow and soft, forgiveness and apology at once. 

The irritation- the embarrassment- flushes from Levi as fondness billows in its place, battered a bit by the lingering sense of wanting to hold onto the anger for the sake of being angry. Releasing misunderstanding is not a simple thing for Levi, but he manages as they kiss, Erwin’s careful fingertips ghosting the angle of Levi’s cheekbone, sliding past the edge of his hairline. When they break their eyes find each other immediately, like they had each left the kiss with the intention of doing this. 

“Maybe say that instead of laughing next time,” Levi drawls after a long moment, and the way Erwin’s lips turn up into a smile is so endearing that Levi is forced to lean in again just to press a fresh kiss to them. 

Erwin leans back against the headboard and beckons for Levi to join him with a hand outstretched. Mildly resenting the way he’s forced to climb across the bed like a child, Levi shifts and turns himself around until he’s settling in, until the warmth of Erwin’s side presses reassuringly against him, his clean scent familiar and comfortable. Tugging Erwin’s arm so that it drapes across his bare shoulders, Levi’s stomach flutters when Erwin breaks from the guide and touches him of his own accord, trailing a blazing fingertipped trail against Levi’s bicep, down his arm and back up again. A soft sound finds its way out from the back of his throat of its own accord, and he turns his head to press a gentle kiss against the warm, scarred skin of Erwin’s neck. Something darker, hungrier lurks in his gut but he ignores the twist of it; it isn’t for now. Now is time to lie together and breathe, for Levi to listen to Erwin’s heartbeat and reflect on the interlocking qualities of their minds. It’s late; he hadn’t noticed the height of the moon through the frosted window until now. 

They lie together for some time in the dim candlelight, the image of little Erwin still swimming in the back of Levi’s mind despite the trouble he’d caused. It’s strange to think of an Erwin that existed before he had entered his life, to consider the ways in which he might have changed since then, and the ways in which he hadn’t. Levi’s gaze shifts from Erwin’s chest back up to his eyes to find them open, crystal blue fixated on the ceiling, lost in thoughts of his own. 

“I wonder if we would have been friends back then,” Erwin muses aloud. It isn’t until his low voice breaks the silence that Levi realizes how long it had been since either of them had said anything. Levi’s eyebrow raises of its own accord as he indulges in Erwin’s ridiculous consideration for a moment, envisioning his emaciated childhood self shaking hands with a tiny, too-serious Erwin, dressed from head to toe in tasteless apparel. 

“You’re joking, right,” comes Levi’s dry response, angling his head to better deliver an unimpressed look. Erwin glances down to meet him and huffs out his nose as an excuse, as if to say, _you never know._

“You wouldn’t have given me a second glance, and I would have robbed you blind before you knew what hit you. We wouldn’t have been friends, Erwin, we wouldn’t have been anything.” 

“Maybe not,” Erwin concedes easily, returning his gaze to the ceiling. His arm tightens around Levi, pressing him closer, and Levi’s heart rattles in his ribcage like this isn’t their hundredth night together. The bed is warm and the photograph tucked far away, the sepia eyes of the stern little boy who would have walked past a little Levi on the street hidden from few. “It doesn’t matter now.” 

Levi studies Erwin like he always has, admiring in the dying candlelight the curve of his jaw and slope of his nose, the angle of his thick eyelashes. A swell of staggering affection streaks through him and he swallows, leans into it.

“No,” he agrees, and tilts his head back against Erwin’s firm shoulder, closing his eyes. As Erwin’s fingers find their lazy way back to Levi’s hair, Levi abandons the ideas of himself and Erwin as young boys in the past, forsaking the false past and a thousand other false pasts for this real moment instead. 

The kids would find their way here eventually.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the comments and kudos! Let me know if you have a word suggestion for a story inspo and I'll write it! :) I'll try to update in the next few days!


	4. "Sip"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> God bless the word generator, this one was too perfect.

In all of his time in the Scout Regiment, throughout his long history of coming into contact with an eclectic variety of nobles and streetrats alike, of merchants and scoundrels and royalty, not once- never once- has Erwin seen anything like it. 

His skilfully polished ability to maintain a ten step advance in any conversation is no match for this oddity- Erwin’s sentence dwindles into nonexistence and he falters, catching on through the word halfway out his mouth as he stares at Levi Ackerman and his teacup. 

Rather than slipping his nimble fingers through the handle of the cup, the pearly china of it somehow appropriate in Levi’s surprisingly delicate grip, the private elects instead to cup the rim in a bizarre kind of hold, his fingertips pressing into the outside and holding it in place as he lifts to drink. 

Gone with a swiftness is the man Erwin has known thus far- wild and fierce, stubborn and biting, violent to the point of detriment at times, fiercely loyal but in a way that edges on danger. Whoever that man had been slips under the surface to make room for this new Levi, a slight boy of a man clutching a teacup with careful hands, sipping as daintily as a lady in waiting. There is a two second window of opportunity for Erwin to recover as Levi tends to his tea, too immersed in the steaming drink to notice his Deputy Commander fixating on his process. Instead of collecting himself and refocusing, Erwin shirks the chance before he knows he’s wasting it, too enraptured by this curious performance to gather himself in time. 

Levi smacks his lips once, quietly, in what seems to be private appreciation of Erwin’s masala chai. His thin eyebrows twitch into a sort of grimace Erwin has come to understand over the past few months as a sign of approval, and he fascinates in this mild shift in expression as well. Without quite understanding how it has happened, Erwin is suddenly, oddly spellbound. And then Levi is looking up, his sharp, unfazed eyes cool even as Erwin watches them discover his trespass. It’s too late to look away and it would be nothing short of silly to pretend he hadn’t been caught staring, so Erwin doubles down, inclining his head slightly to acknowledge Levi’s enjoyment of the tea, albeit a bit awkwardly.

“You like it then, I take it?” 

He sounds stiff, overly-formal, and his own voice echoes mockingly back in his ears. It’s a strange phenomenon, the way he is both grounded and unsteadied around Levi. 

“Yes,” Levi says slowly, eyes narrowing the slightest bit, almost imperceptible. Something jumps in Erwin’s chest without the slightest bit of due cause. 

There are very few people who possess the ability to force Erwin to self-examine, to check himself and turn inward to question his own ideas, and when the other people on this short list do this, they do it with intent. Contrarily, ever since Levi had joined the ranks, and especially since he’d climbed to the position of private, he had cast his strange spell on Erwin through the simple act of being around him. Unperturbed to a point sometimes nearing detachment, Levi is a quiet man, introverted, and though he’s incredibly helpful when Erwin needs him to be, he doesn’t often verbally criticize Erwin. But Erwin never misses a single instance when Levi _wants_ to; he can feel it bubbling under his skin sometimes, can sense the fire behind the ice gray eyes, and more than once he has almost spoken it into tangibility, urged Levi to speak his mind, invited his opinions, contrary or otherwise. They’re almost there, Erwin thinks, almost to the point of candid conversation, but there is still something in the way. Perhaps they just need to learn more about each other, to lean further into the strong trust already solidifying between them. In any case, Erwin still finds himself on edge around Levi at times, caring far too much about how his ideas are perceived by this single subordinate. It’s ridiculous and illogical, and yet he cannot seem to find his way out of it. 

“Good,” Erwin says cordially, prepared to refocus. Almost immediately, however, he finds his eyes drifting back to the teacup held captive in Levi’s unconventional grip. His gaze follows the cup back down to the saucer where Levi releases it, and when his eyes flicker back up to Levi’s he finds himself being scrutinized in the very same way he has been staring at Levi’s hands. He clears his throat and prepares an explanation, but Levi is suddenly speaking. It’s the first time Erwin’s heard him speak unprompted in some time- they haven’t had much time alone together since Levi’s second expedition beyond the walls, back when he was still a recruit, and he’s calmed since then. Erwin can tell that he’s learned to bite his tongue in a room full of superiors, but now there is only one, and it doesn’t seem to hold him back. 

“I know it’s not the right way to hold it,” Levi says flatly. “Are you going to keep gawking at it through the rest of this meeting?”

Levi drawls the question, the irritation mild but clear beneath the words. For a flickering, disconcerting moment Erwin feels like the subordinate, caught snooping somewhere he wasn’t meant to. Some base, instinctual part of him resents this sensation, and something higher, more refined actually respects it- a confusing mess of impulses. He blinks and stirs himself out of it, regaining his composure and authority in one focused breath. 

“I apologize,” he finds himself saying, with a tone caught somewhere between a genuine apology and a laugh. “It _is_ certainly.... unconventional.”

“I just said that,” Levi snaps, glancing acidly down at the tea as if it itself had insulted the way he had been gripping it. 

_No, actually, you said it wasn’t the right way_ , Erwin wants to say in return, and he is alarmed at the sudden impulse to tease. Something about Levi demands it, encourages banter, tempts unprofessionalism. Erwin frowns a little to himself, attempting to circumnavigate this curiosity. 

He’s going to speak again, to redirect the conversation back to business so they can finish up and get on with their evenings, but suddenly Levi is speaking again and Erwin finds himself more intrigued than warranted, and more willing to give up his hold on the conversation than he should be. 

“I broke a tea set once,” Levi shares testily, as if Erwin were forcing him to divulge some incredibly personal piece of information. 

“Oh?” Erwin ventures mildly, somewhere between acknowledgement and encouragement. He’s careful not to lean too far in either direction, and is hesitant to add even one more word to the sentiment for fear of misinterpretation. Luckily, Levi seems too entranced in whatever bitter memory he is reliving because he doesn’t even look up at Erwin as he continues on, with the curt tone of a man recounting a war story as quickly as possible as to avoid sinking back into the horrors he had experienced there. 

“It was nice china, the fanciest set I’d ever seen, and I picked up the teacup and the goddamn handle fell off. Broke.” Levi’s eyes slip up from the cup to find Erwin’s again, level and irritated. He shrugs once, impassively. “So I drink like this now. Happy?”

Absurdly and inexplicably, a warm swell of something not unlike affection billows to life in Erwin’s chest. He begins to smile and fights it back with the same difficulty as resisting a persistent yawn. The fact is, he _is_ happy- he is far too amused to even begin to admit, and he clears his throat to cover it up, though he isn’t at all confident in the efficacy of this performance.

“That is as good a reason as any, in my opinion,” remarks, and the smile creeps into his voice despite his best efforts. Levi stares at him for a moment in appraisal before plucking the teacup back off of its gilded saucer with a crisp, glassy sound. For a fleeting moment that catches Erwin entirely off guard, he is certain that a smile ghosts Levi’s lips before they are obscured by the cup- acknowledgement, in the tiniest, barest way, of how silly this entire exchange is. 

Erwin dismisses the fondness that persists in his chest; he’ll sort it out later, categorize it and analyze it if necessary, though he doubts it will be. Escaping an exchange with the feisty private unharmed, getting to know him even the slightest bit better is more thrilling than it should be, but Erwin enjoys it for the time being. He shuffles his papers and relocates the one he needs, clears his throat genuinely this time in preparation for the rest of the debriefing, but he keeps one eye on Levi and his teacup. As they return to work Erwin allows himself to indulge in the humor of the strange man’s mesmerizing ways of doing things, and the unexpected charm that comes with his delicate sips.


	5. "Dull"

The morning is still, silent in the grip of winter. Levi wakes up with the sun, blinking into consciousness as the white rays filter through his curtains and against the floor, streaking in clean lines up the walls of his home. He hadn’t called it that for the first year,  _ home _ , but it had worn against him and infiltrated him in the quiet moments, times when he hadn’t realized he was letting his guard down. Comfort had slipped in a transition as smooth as summer to autumn, and now he sleeps through the night and wakes up to consistency and familiarity, strangeness turned to comfort. 

He pads in bare feet across the small kitchen, glancing through the panes over the sink at what’s left of Maria. They’ve been working at it for what feels like decades, probably three months in reality. The sound used to bother him as he tried to go about his business in the evening, but it, like the home itself, had grown familiar, too. Sometimes now Levi sits up nights alone in his drawing room, listening to the clink of hammer against stone and unable to fight the poetic quality of the destruction of the wall. He enjoys it now, despite himself, the sound of it toppling to the ground, rendered useless. 

This morning Levi fishes a teabag out of the pantry, earl grey, and selects a teacup from his small array. Sometimes thoughts will drift across his sleepy mind at this hour, senseless things like,  _ is this peace? _ He doesn’t have an answer to it but he lets it take up space in his mind. Maybe he’ll find them someday- answers- and the questions will be waiting in his head where he had left them. 

He begins boiling water and stares out the window again, breathing in deeply. Some memory tugs at the base of his brain, some echo of something someone had said once about the wall, but it’s lost in the swirl of the past, something that’s beginning to feel like a wash. 

Most of the time this phenomenon is a relief- the way the past is sealing itself up and away, hardening over and stilling into something firm and concrete. It doesn’t move around much anymore; certain memories used to alter with each consideration, changing colors depending on the emotion they were approached with- a dangerous thing. Levi can touch the past now, can run his mind along it and find himself unscathed by the horrors, beginning in the wash of years to feel like someone else’s nightmares. Distant- that’s what they are. Dull. 

He pours the water into the cup, dunks the teabag once, twice.  _ Is this peace?  _ The question comes again and he lets it. 

Levi crosses the room and begins to settle into his armchair before his overcoat catches his eye- he had left it hanging over the back of the thing where it now lies in defiance, turning the place into a pigsty. He clicks his tongue in disapproval as if someone else were responsible, sets his tea down, and sntaches the clothing from where it peers up at him judgmentally, challenging him to take it back to the closet. 

The walk back to his room is short; the house is tiny, but it suits him. He doesn’t need much space- he never had, even back in his days with the scout regiment. Six years back now- it feels like a hundred, and also yesterday. 

In his room Levi stands on his toes to snatch an extra hanger from the shelf above the rack that holds his modest collection of outfits- sweaters and new cravats and a modest array of winter-colored shades he’d never worn in his life before the end of the war. 

As he manages to slide a hanger out from its awkward place on its shelf, something suddenly comes clattering to the ground, streaking past his face in an indigo flash. 

Levi’s heart is suddenly in his throat, high and tight and beating against his eardrums. Something grips him around the base of his neck, a creeping dread, a thick, suffocating feeling, because in an instant he knows what it is. Like a comatose patient gasping back to life, like a child snapping out of a bad dream, or slipping into one, Levi falls, slips and falls into the tide of memories that slam into him like a wave that had crept up before he could stop it, before he had even known he had wandered into the sea. 

He bends, in a haze, and plucks it slowly from the wooden floor- the little indigo talisman, a tiny soldier with a severe face, staring back at him through a mess of years, finding him again like a long-lost friend. 

Erwin comes to him then, for the first time in a long, long time, and like the question-  _ are you at peace?- _ Levi does nothing to stop it. 

Erwin. 

He had been tall and strong, chiseled and handsome, sweet, serious, brave, as genuinely stoic as the fake soldier in Levi’s hand. His voice had been low, though Levi can’t quite remember it now. His eyes had been blue, though Levi can’t recall the shade. He had smiled at Levi with those eyes once, somewhere in the past, sometime in the past, a hundred years ago, and had slipped this warmly into Levi’s hand. 

_ It’s a talisman of good luck _ , he had said, Levi thinks. Erwin’s face can’t manage to swim back into focus in Levi’s mind- it’s almost there but some angles are wrong, like Levi had tried to draw him from memory and missed a slope here, a curve there. 

Upon receiving this little soldier and this piece of advice Levi had mocked him, or at least he thinks he had. He had scoffed but he had taken it anyway, and he had taken it with him into the field for every mission after. He can’t think of how it had gotten up there with the hangers, or when, but he holds it now, looking at it hard like if he stares long enough it might bring Erwin’s real face and voice back into his memory. 

Levi’s chest tightens harder, his breath comes heavier, and then- it releases, because there’s nothing to do. A calm takes its place, a seeping tranquility, so much less than the memory of Erwin deserves. Suddenly frantic, suddenly near dizziness in desperation, Levi searches his insides for a pull of tears, for a touch of overwhelm, for an emotion stronger than this. He waits, and waits. Nothing comes. There is nothing in him but the dull, the quiet dullness. 

Staring down at the little soldier Levi leans against the wall, falls into it, squeezes his eyes shut tight and begins to tear careless through memories he has kept so carefully tucked away for years, now in search of a feeling for the ghost of Erwin, the Erwin without a face. 

Images come to him, the upturn of Erwin’s smile, the warmth of his bed, nights together. He recalls the pleasures and pains, catches glimpses of their years together- quiet murmurs and soft sounds of pleasure, screams of anguish- but it’s all locked beyond something, some pane of glass, or fog of unclarity. He gropes inwardly and comes up with nothing again and again, sand through his fingertips, emotionless nothing. 

At some point in the passing of years, the blur of time, in the sinking in of new familiarity and the scarring over of wounds, Erwin had become dull. And Levi hadn’t even noticed. 

He blinks down at the little soldier in his hand, still. Breathing slowly, he opens himself to tears again, one last attempt, but he knows even as he does it that they have all been cried already; they had been cried years and years ago. Erwin had solidified like the rest of it, it had happened in some moment when Levi had turned his back, glancing toward the future for once, or maybe slowly, over many moments. Without knowing he was doing it Levi had moved onward without him, and the place beside him where Erwin was meant to be had stayed empty. 

“I’m sorry,” he says aloud and it hurts, in a quiet voice in his quiet room, a voice as dull as the pain. Erwin is a ghost now. Erwin can’t touch him. But Erwin can’t hurt him, either. Levi sways on the spot and thinks maybe daring to remember Erwin had been some kind of final test. 

Levi stands on his tiptoes again, replaces the talisman on the shelf, out of view. The outline of Erwin lingers in his mind for a moment, vague but here again. The shape of his sleeping face some early morning, the outline of his body some late night, the distorted angles of his chin and nose from a thousand different times, different moments, half-forgotten but still just there. 

Once upon a time life had been hell, and war had ravaged their lives, and he and Erwin had found something warm and passionate and alive and ephemeral. Now it is all gone and Levi makes his way back into his kitchen, plucking his teacup off the counter and aching, but aching in a distant way. 

_ Is this peace?  _ asks the universe. 

It’s close enough.

  
  



	6. "Brush"

Levi knows it to be an inevitable casualty of diplomatic meetings- tense, dull rooms in which notices are passed and pens exchanged out of necessity, officer to captain to commander and back again. Erwin’s steely blue eyes often remain fixed at the far end of the table as he holds these things out for Levi to take, face often stern as he addresses Mike or Hange where they sit, too far from him to receive anything so directly. Levi lounges at Erwin’s right, a position both symbolic and practical, and it is in this seat that Levi is often touched by Erwin, the ghost of fingertips against fingertips with the thoughtless transference of a document or memo. 

In this room Erwin’s mind is a rigid, anal vaccuum of a place, whirring and calculating under the calm clairty of his eyes; when he sits in this chair at the head of the table he stiffens into duty and Levi stays out of his way. It had taken the better part of four years to learn to read Erwin but now Levi knows now. He knows that when Erwin sits with his back off the chair, when the tiny crease appears above his eyebrow and his eyes flash in the same way they do in battle, it is time for Levi to hold his tongue, to lean back in his chair with his arms crossed and let Erwin work uncriticized. He watches from this position, watches as Erwin blooms into his full size as a military commander, studies him too carefully to be warranted but he can only embarrass himself for it; nobody knows how he feels. Sometimes Levi catches Hange watching him as he watches Erwin, and part of him thinks they probably suspect something, but there’s no proof beyond lingering eyes. 

Safe enough. 

The brush of fingers happens a hundred times in the same way before it suddenly happens differently, one debriefing after Levi’s squad has taken a particularly bad hit, when something heavier than plain silence has pulled up a chair with the officers gathered around the table because these losses are the worst they’ve seen in a while, maybe a year. They sit, rigid and pained, and one by one read aloud the names of the fallen. Levi’s itching in his skin, something hot and dangerous, angry, rattling inside of him. He wants to push away from the desk, stalk out to the grounds, breathe in the fresh air until the shaking in his vision calms down enough for him to see something other than red. 

“Meisner and Thurmond, last seen at the edge of the forest,” someone says from a million miles away as Levi’s eyes burn holes into the curved pattern in the wood of the table. “Official status, ‘missing.’”

The scritching sound of Erwin’s pen to his left only burrows further into Levi’s brain. He imagines a bug scrabbling against his skull, worming its way into his mind, settling there and driving him crazy. Blood streaks across his vision, the gaunt, distorted faces of the young cadets he had lead straight to death today. Thurmond had been sixteen.

“Levi,” comes Erwin’s voice, low but strong enough to jar him from the dead, white face of his youngest recruit. 

Levi blinks, eyebrows drawn. A sharp breath in brings to attention the mask of indifference he wears too easily; he can feel it slip up in his eyes like drawing a shade, a familiar feeling. 

Erwin’s looking at him, steady and with a hand half-outstretched. In his grip is the crisp sheet with the bold, fancy lettering at the top:  **Missing In Action: Registry Submission** , Erwin’s scrawled date in the empty slot next to the title childish in comparison to the grand symbols. They’re gilded and it makes Levi want to vomit. Big, grand, government letters to top the page of dead names, a graveyard full of identities and dreams lost in pointless action, made pretty with a touch of gold and a swirl around the  _ g _ . The first time he’d seen one of these forms his instinct had screamed in fury that the big cheeses were trying to gloss over the horror with honorifics, to decorate the loss until the smell of death was covered with their thin brand of perfumed bullshit. Years of writing dead people’s names on these papers had confirmed his instinct. 

“Levi,” Erwin prompts again, an irritation, and Levi’s huff is louder than intended but he doesn’t care once it’s out. Stealing a glance around the table out of his periphery, Levi finds that everyone is fixated on the interlocking of their fingers, hands folded gravely on the table before them. He wrenches the detachment further, another layer of nonchalance slipping up into his eyes before he can look back at Erwin because Erwin is harder to fool than most, Erwin sees past Levi’s bullshit when he’s careless, and today is not a time to take chances. Thurmond is swimming in Levi’s mind as he reaches out to take the paper from Erwin in the more-than-silence.

His fingers close around the edge and he’s beginning to draw it away when it happens- Erwin readjusts, only just, so that his warm fingertips brush along the back of Levi’s knuckles, run gently down the shape of his fingers, and Levi jerks in surprise, eyes darting to Erwin with battleground instinct. 

Half-expecting Erwin not to acknowledge the clearly intentional contact, Levi’s heart hammers when he finds Erwin’s blue gaze there, ready for him, and his heart leaps into his throat. 

He draws the documents quickly to himself and plucks the pen off the table with a wild mind. His mouth is dry and his movements perfunctory as he signs away the right to the true stories of his troops, softening the sharpness of their deaths with a nice big  **_Missing_ ** . He can’t focus hard enough to be angry enough, suddenly consumed with a warm churning sensation, ragged and half-formed thoughts of Erwin’s fingertips flurrying around his mind, stuck in his throat, spinning in his chest. It had been intentional, it had to have been intentional; he’d never been touched like that by Erwin- not by any accident or otherwise. Suddenly the eyes of everyone else in the room seen to be on him and Levi scrambles inwardly to regain some sense of control.. This is not the place for this panic. 

He finishes the scrawl of his signature and passes the paper back, eyes sharp and analyzing, but this time Erwin doesn’t look at him, and he doesn’t touch him again either. He shuffles the papers and slides them on top of the others, straightening them as Levi draws his hands back and under the desk, pressed down against his lap where he fights the urge to run his own fingers against the path Erwin had followed, replaying the moment in his mind like a schoolboy. 

The meeting carries on and Levi carries on, speaking when he’s meant to and shutting up when there’s nothing to say, and Erwin leads with the same unmoved grace as always, pretending as though he hasn’t set Levi’s mind and heart off into unknown territory to cast about for meaning, a way to make it make sense. Levi steels himself in his chair, sets his jaw and fights new and staggering visions of Erwin’s hands drifting to other places.

Erwin speaks to the captains and Levi tries to think of Thurmond. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks so much for reading! As always, I super appreciate your sweet comments and kudos! Let me know if you have any one-word prompts for the coming chapters and I'll be more than happy to write for them!


	7. "Wound"

“Where is he?” Erwin demands breathlessly, his own voice ringing in his head like someone else’s. The smell of blood tangs the air like a taste, sitting heavy in his mouth as he ducks under the low doorway of someone’s abandoned home. Splintered wood litters the ground and a broken rafter lies cascaded under the shattered window, glinting glass decorating the floor in jagged little triangles. Someone’s blood paints the walls- someone long gone, long eaten. 

The mission had been going to plan until it hadn’t- until not one, not two, but three abnormals had slipped in from the east without warning and were upon them before they had so much as blinked. The entire right flank had been decimated before their eyes, as useless orders had escaped from Erwin’s mouth half-formed. They had lost too many cadets to think about, not here, not while they were still beyond the wall. Erwin had steeled himself and turned away from the screams as his duty so often demanded him to, leading the charge northwest until that fell apart too. With the arrival of more unexpected titans, missed by the front scouts in the chaos of the eastern attack, they had been near a state helplessness. 

It had been then that Levi- Levi, the constant backup- had taken his squad and split off as per the contingency plan. Erwin had led the remaining body of soldiers back to the deserted village without so much as a look behind him- he couldn’t look, not in the heat of it. He couldn’t afford to spare an instant of doubt. 

Even now, even after all this time, sending Levi off into the midst of it is a heavy thing. Rooted firmly at the center of his soul is Erwin’s responsibility to the squad, the requirement of his cool head and careful calculations. But buried beneath that is Levi. Every time Levi’s cloak swishes in a flash of emerald and the sound of his horse’s hooves clop furiously away, every time his voice, barking strong, tenor orders, drifts into the distance, Erwin’s heart pulls in the same direction, begging to follow where he must force himself not to.

Back in the deserted village designated for recoup, Erwin had been in the midst of forming new ranks with the cart guard teams in the fallen storeroom of an abandoned bar- chunks of blown up glass being slid across the countertop to indicate soldiers, green for command and brown for subordinates, scratching the surface as if the place had never belonged to anybody- when one of Levi’s had rushed in, flushed and panting. 

“Captain Levi, sir- the captain-”

It had been with a violent force that Erwin had snapped from his musing. Feeling as though the world were tilting out underneath him, somehow he had managed through the coldness in his chest to regain composure enough to prompt the terrified soldier to give his full report.

Levi’s squadron had been badly battered, losing six in the demolition. Levi had attempted to compensate for the damage alone and had taken down three alone before a botched attempt to save one Sophie Kortsen, a young, doe-eyed girl on her second mission, now dead and torn to pieces.

“Finish up here,” Erwin had ordered in a tight, controlled voice, not looking back as he followed the shaking man out and into the open, biting cold. Together they had marched across the road to the small chestnut-colored home they had designated before setting out as a recovery area, Erwin’s head a fogged and vacant mess. As the trembling scout had pushed open the door, Erwin distantly recalled the way Levi had scoffed at the idea of the setup in his debriefing. 

_ “Recovery? Either we die or we don’t. There’s no such thing as recovery out there.” _

“Where is he?” Erwin inquires of the support team now. They hang around the decimated drawing room, looking like they’ve been awake for years. Most have their heads in their hands, and one cries in the corner. The bleak expressions on their faces inspire no kind of reassurance as one of them gestures to a room toward the back, the threshold blocked by something that might have once resembled a cabinet. 

Erwin crosses the room like a rigid ghost, following the shaking scout, their boots crunching in the mess of glass and wood and dust. He swings a leg over the catastrophically damaged furniture, heart beating in his throat. The scout gestures weakly to the door on the right and Erwin signals a dismissal without looking back at him.

He raps firmly against the scratched wood, heart in his throat, the floor spiraling under him as he resists the dizzy pull with all his effort. As footsteps approach behind the door a whirlwind of unwelcome images streak across his mind. 

_ Levi in pieces, mangled and dying, Levi without an arm or a leg, Levi blind.  _

The door opens and there stands Martivers, Levi’s second-in-command for this mission. Her face is gray and she gives Erwin a curt nod of acknowledgement that triggers a surge of thrashing unrest in his chest; he forces steadiness, refusing to peer over her shoulder like a child despite everything in him screaming for it. 

“Captain Levi?” he inquires instead, like he’s making a casual drop in at Levi’s residence. His voice is unnatural but miraculously even.

“He’s stable, commander, but he’s going to need to be stitched up before we head out again,” she answers, and Erwin watches the uncertainty dance around in her eyes, playing at every line in her expression. He swallows thickly and nods once, quick. An ounce of relief blossoms in him, only just. __

_ He’s alive. He’s alive and he’s stable.  _

“I’d like to see him.” 

Something new flashes in her eyes, something closer to fear, perhaps, and then she nods again, stepping aside. 

“Of course.”

Erwin slips into the room, dizzy, heart hammering like it means to escape. He swallows and braces himself for any sight, steadying himself as best he can through the haze of pure, sickening fear. 

At the far side of the room, Levi is propped up in a broken bed with a dirty mattress, a pool of blood darkening the white under his right leg. His gear lies tangled at the foot of the bed, knotted like it had been pulled from him with little regard as to where it ended up, and his cloak pools against itself on the floor a little ways away from the foot of it.

Nicks and thin red scratches line Levi’s right cheek and shoulder, his shirt pulled open enough to display the new marks but not far enough from his skin to avoid the dots of blood that have stained the place over his heart. It takes Erwin’s quick eyes a few moments of analysis to find Levi’s leg; when they do, his heart stills in his chest. 

A gash deeper than anything Erwin has seen on Levi before splits the skin from the captain’s outer knee to halfway up hip, the dark blood seeping through the white gauze pressed uselessly against it, as if by a kid playing doctor. Its depth reveals the layers of his insides, the shades of red shifting from light to dark, exposing him an inch down. Bloody bandages lie in swirls around the bed as if Martivers has already been through too many to count, and the reddened near-black of Levi’s blood drips steadily down his leg and into the fabric of his pants, into the ruined bedspread as the stain grows slowly around it. Levi’s eyes are fixed on the ceiling and his jaw is set, hard. Erwin knows this paled look; Levi is far away. 

“Levi,” Erwin says without meaning to, in a voice uncontrolled. Immediately the gray eyes snap out of the mist and find Erwin across the room. Something shifts in the expression, relief, maybe, or maybe embarrassment. The words Erwin had been planning to say next catch in his throat as their eyes lock. 

“You managed to get back in one piece, then,” Levi tries, but it’s a marred attempt; his voice is all wrong, tight and unnatural, far from his usual lazy tone despite the clear effort to imitate it. 

“Thanks to you,” Erwin agrees anyway, voice too warm to be any kind of professional, crossing the room with a quickness only Levi can inspire. Martivers speaks again behind him, and this reminder of her presence catches Erwin in his tracks, just in time to stop him from sitting himself at Levi’s side, reaching out to touch his face, pressing a kiss into his hair, against his lips. Erwin’s chest aches with the effort of the restraint as he turns to face her again, remembering himself. 

“They sent for me because I have some experience with a needle, although it’s a-admittedly not ideal-” Martivers stammers, clearing her throat as she crosses the room, returns to the spot Erwin’s knock had presumably called her away from. A small flame in a cup flickers there in the corner and she bends over it, tending to the long, thin needle glinting orange with the light of the fire. Erwin’s throat tightens at the sight of it and he turns back to find Levi isn’t looking, his weary eyes cast away again. 

“You’re going to stitch him up here, then?” Erwin presses, words for Martivers and eyes for Levi, who avoids his gaze. 

“To the best of my ability,” she mutters from her squat in the corner, and it is with this that Levi f inally turns, jerking his head in her direction. 

“Your confidence is inspiring,” he snaps, the familiar bite in his tone encouraging the smallest flare of relief in Erwin. Levi’s eyes flash, cold and critical, and Erwin wills encouragement from where he stands, gripping the footboard. 

“I-I’m sorry, captain,” Martivers quivers, light eyes darting to Erwin and then away again, perhaps searching for support, though Erwin can’t offer any. Levi is uncontainable; Erwin still finds himself amused by the assumption that he is any exception to this phenomenon.

Martivers bends low and plucks the needle from the flame, beginning to tamper with the medical supplies with a rustle of bandages and a clicking of metal against metal, harsh instruments teasing of pain to come. Erwin’s cool eyes flicker back down to Levi, whose expression is held in a grimace, gray eyes latched onto something past Erwin’s torso, arms pressed tightly over his chest, rising and falling only slightly too quickly to be genuinely calm. 

Martivers turns with the needle in hand, now threaded, swallowing visibly. Erwin watches something take over Levi, something false and too-composed, smooth but overly-perfected. It might have worked on someone who knew him less, but Erwin is no such stranger.

“You should go,” says Levi suddenly, in a falsely bored kind of way. He stares at his mangled leg. “Fat fucking lot of good you’re going to do the regiment lurking around in this shitty excuse for an infirmary.”

He won’t meet Erwin’s eyes and Erwin knows it’s a plea for his dignity- an attempt to send Erwin away before he can catch a glimpse of weakness, of Levi’s pain. It’s a cheap trick, and as Erwin blinks down at the form of his captain, suddenly small against the vastness of the king-sized bedspread, it almost works. It is within an inch of pity that Erwin suddenly balks from the inclination, wrenching himself away from it with grim amusement. How dare he  _ pity _ Levi- humanity’s strongest, his partner, his equal. Moreover, how dare Levi attempt to compel him to. 

Erwin is quiet long enough that Levi does look up, then, and Erwin catches his gray eyes before they can dart away again. They hold onto each other for a long moment, challenging one another, and then, almost too subtle to be detected, Levi inclines his head just slightest twitch. It’s nothing to Martivers but to Erwin it is an affirmation, clear as day and rare as treasure,  _ fine, you can stay; fine, I’m afraid.  _

As Martivers swallows again and approaches Levi, who sits rigid on the edge of the bed, Erwin crosses before he can second-guess the action, cutting past the instinct to hold back, to stay out of suspicion’s way. One glance at Martivers as she crouches beside the bed is enough to tell Erwin that there is nothing else on her mind, and even if she were to shift, to glance up and catch any kind of contact between the two officers that breached the realm of brotherhood, the world would spin on, the scouts would remain unchanged, the repercussions nonexistent. _ There is so little love in this world, _ Erwin thinks as he moves to Levi’s side,  _ that nobody should care where it comes up so long as it still does from time to time. _ He sweeps his cloak to the side and comes to a stop at the headboard, leaning slightly against the wall behind it.

“Erwin,” Levi attempts without looking up at him, backtracking his approval, but there’s no hard fight left in his voice. When Martivers hesitates in position, the needle glinting inches from Levi’s torn skin, his expression hardens but he goes silent. 

Erwin places a hand on his captain’s shoulder as their makeshift physician makes the first puncture. Levi winces only barely, his strong jaw set firm, but Erwin can sense him grinding his teeth from where he stands, back and above. As Martivers begins to thread through the wound Erwin tightens his grip on Levi’s shoulder, doing his best to remind him where he is; here. 

Erwin’s been stitched up plenty of times, with and without anesthetic, none of them being pleasant experiences. His eyes flicker back and forth from the open wound and the painstaking process to Levi, making his best attempts to gauge the torture, to measure the pain Levi is so skilled at hiding behind that locked expression. Every once and a while Levi jerks slightly, and sweat begins to stand out against his forehead, but he says nothing and he barely shifts in the bed. Erwin grips him steadily, there if Levi needs him, there if he doesn’t. Each prick into Levi’s leg sends a twinge through Erwin’s own body, and, stuck to his spot, he finds himself wishing he could take on half the burden, to share the struggle instead of watching it play out helplessly. 

It takes sixteen stitches for Levi to break, though it doesn’t happen in any obvious way. In fact, Martivers doesn’t even look up from her handiwork when it happens, face an inch from Levi’s ruined skin, pushing the cooling needle through with delicate care. 

Levi doesn’t jerk away, he doesn’t cry out, but just as the seventeenth stitch is stabbing into his skin, he reaches up with his shaking right hand to the same shoulder and grasps Erwin’s hand. Heart leaping into his throat, Erwin presses harder to strengthen the contact and Levi holds on like it’s the only thing tethering him to sanity. 

For an excruciating amount of time they stay there like this, watching together as Levi’s leg closes up bit by bit. At some point and without realizing he’s doing it, Erwin bergins to press his thumb into Levi’s back in small, circular motions. He is without a sense of whether it’s any kind of help, but Levi doesn’t shake him off and he doesn’t stop. 

Finally, after an hour or maybe a year, Martivers sits back on her heels, wringing her hands and tugging at the joints in her fingers. Dragging her teeth against her lip, she glances up the bed at the two of them, awaiting judgment. 

Erwin’s right leg is pins and needles, strange pressures and patches of numbness blooming and dying again throughout it. He shifts where he stands but he doesn’t let go of Levi, and he doesn’t miss the way Martivers’ gaze flickers for an instant to the place where Levi still holds onto him too; she registers it and then glances away again, as if pretending she hadn’t seen anything at all. . 

“D-done,” she says with a sense of ceremony, her voice the first sound in the room in what feels like an eternity. 

“Thanks,” Levi mutters, either to Martivers or Erwin or both, and it is with this small admission of gratitude that he finally releases Erwin from the vice of his grip. Feeling floods back into Erwin’s wrist; he slides his other hand around the place and rubs into his own skin, slowly regaining the sensation of what it is like to not have Levi pressing into him. 

“You’ve done good work, Martivers,” Erwin says, and his throat is dry from underuse. He clears it as she gives a shaky little nod of acknowledgement. “Go find the cart guard- Captain Levi will need to ride back in one of the empty ones.”

Levi makes a sound of disapproval and Erwin knows that it’s his compromise; Levi is too smart to give into the instinct Erwin knows has taken hold of him- the instinct to insist that he’s fine, that he can handle himself, that he can ride a horse. This is the sound of Levi’s iron resilience colliding with the embarrassment of being taken down and out of commission, and knowing there’s nothing to be done about it. 

“Yes, sir,” Martivers barks with too much fervor, her eagerness to escape the room blatantly evident. She salutes and heads quickly out the door, the wavering in her path likely a product of the time spent crouched in one position. The moment the door closes behind her Erwin turns, but Levi is already pushing himself away, sliding his legs down over the edge of the bed so that his toes touch the floor. It’s almost too much of a distance for him to reach comfortably, and Erwin battles between warm fondness and fiery disapproval of the sudden movement. 

“You should stay put, Levi,” he warns, but he is no match for Levi’s stubborn attitude as the captain makes a reach for his cloak, puddled on the floor just past the footboard. 

“Levi, let me-” 

Levi is normally swifter than Erwin but Levi is not at his best, and Erwin takes advantage of it now, maneuvering around the edge of the bed to snatch the emerald cloth coolly from under Levi’s grip. 

“Stop moving around. That’s an order.” 

“ _ Tch _ ,” Levi dismisses, rolling his eyes and sinking back to a normal position. He won’t meet Erwin’s gaze and his shame is almost as evident as his irritation. 

“That’s bullshit,” he tacks on, maybe because his typical  _ tch _ hadn’t felt like enough or perhaps just because acidity is how Levi hides. Either way, Erwin takes it in stride, popping an eyebrow and tossing it back with the barest hint of amusement. 

“Me giving you orders?”

Levi finds Erwin’s gaze, and after a quick moment Erwin watches some of the ice melt away from those gray eyes; all these years later and it still makes Erwin’s heart flip in his chest. 

Undoing the clasp of Levi’s cloak, Erwin slowly kneels before him against the hard wood of the floor, ignoring the droplets of blood and glass dust that slice and soak into his pants as he does. He pauses just long enough to give Levi the chance to bat his hands away, to call him a bastard or tell him he’ll do it himself. Levi stares at him levelly, frowning, but he is still, and Erwin brings his hands up and around Levi to fasten the cloak about his neck. The fondness deepens as Erwn’s fingers press the brass clips together; he can feel Levi’s gaze on him, skimming around his face, and as he finishes the clasp and tugs the material back over Levi’s shoulders, they catch eyes again. 

Erwin is weighing the risk of dipping up for a quick, sweet kiss when Levi beats him to the moment. Cold fingertips brush against Erwin’s jaw, Levi’s thumb tracing a gentle path along Erwin’s cheekbone. Erwin closes his mouth and his hands fall to Levi’s knees, resting on them delicately as Levi strokes slow patterns against his cheek. His heart flutters in his chest, a boyish reminder of the way Erwin loves him. 

Levi studies Erwin for a long, tender moment, and then his lips move to murmur a soft, “Thank you, Erwin.” 

And then his hand drops and he pushes himself back against the headboard, swinging his legs carefully back onto the bed and leaving Erwin kneeling there on the dirty ground. 

Erwin huffs to himself, the barest smile playing at his lips and the ghost of Levi’s touch on his face. As Erwin stands, Levi crosses his arms in the bed, closing his eyes and knitting his brown in pain or irritation or some combination of the two. The kissing will come later, once Levi is safe and clean and warm and Erwin can care for him properly. For now Erwin slips over to the window and stares out of it, waiting for Levi’s cart, grateful Levi is alive, and grateful to be the one he clutches onto. The unfinished battle plans wait for him across the street; they can wait a little longer. 

  
  



	8. "Nameless"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to lilyrose for the word prompt!! Already staring on the next chapter- hope you enjoy this one! :)

The first time Levi loses a horse it hits him harder than he’d thought it would. A chestnut he had named Naila years ago and for a reason he can’t remember, she goes down fast and hard while Levi’s up in the trees with the rest of the scouts. He watches it happen from among the branches, the way she shifts calmly where she stands as the titan bears down, as it crushes her strong muscles and legs into the ground without a moment’s regard, like smearing a bug against a window pane. He almost calls out to her before he catches himself in the stupidity of the instinct and closes his mouth again with a tight frown. 

He thinks about her for the rest of the day, not just when he alights from the tree to clip a piece of her mane off in accordance with scout tradition, but as he showers that night, eats dinner, gets into bed. She had been bending down to graze when it had taken her out and as Levi fights his way into a restless two hours of sleep he imagines that it had been quick, and that she hadn’t been hungry. 

Erwin asks Levi to stay behind after the briefing the next day, and, after asking how he’s holding up, suggests politely that Levi not name his animals so as not to form too strong of an emotional attachment. Levi scoffs at him though he doesn’t quite know why, shocked at the strength of his own reaction. Erwin is stunned too, but he takes it in stride. They don’t talk about it again. 

Levi names his next horse defiantly after that and makes sure Erwin witnesses him do it. He manages to keep this one alive for three months; they die far less frequently than his comrades and subordinates, but it happens nonetheless, in accidents and slipups, moments of misstep that cannot be undone, mistakes that yield dire consequences. _Better horses than people_ , Levi thinks every time one goes down, as if it will alleviate the pain of these minor losses. He mourns them mildly but he mourns all the same, and he lets Erwin observe him do it. It feels like there is a point to prove in this, though he struggles to articulate precisely what. 

Erwin likes to spend an early moment with his horse before battle; he often goes outside and gives it a quick brush and a few pats on the rump. Levi’s watched this ceremony before- Erwin’s pre-war horse courting. He mocks him for it, the extra special care the commander uses with his animal despite his refusal to give it a name. _Just because it doesn’t have a name doesn’t mean I don’t care for it_ , is always Erwin’s brand of response, and Levi scoffs and pretends not to respect it. 

After losing the horse that came after Nailia Erwin asks Levi to stay behind after the night’s briefing. Levi complies with an irritated protest, anticipating another _that’s-what-you-get-for-naming-her_ conversation. Instead they talk about everything other than horses, forgettable things. He marvels in that room as Erwin lets his guard slip only slightly, just enough for Levi to catch the rare twinkle in his eye and the crease of his smile. And then, just as Levi begins to let himself- his real self- peer into the space between them, Erwin apparently decides it is enough, because he bids Levi a curt goodnight and the formalities snap back into place. Levi returns to his quarters that night in a state of irritated indignance, flustered and betrayed, but distracted enough that he doesn’t think of the horse again until morning.

Levi knows exactly what the feeling is- it’s been years since it’s reared its head but when it slips into his heart and nestles in he recognizes it like an old enemy, and not one he’d ever been able to defeat before. It stains his past and every place it's been there is pain, just pain left over now. Even so, when he begins to feel it for Erwin his years of defense are nothing, they fall away like sand and he watches himself drift back to that place, the home of the potential for ruin- the point at which his life begins to fall into someone else’s hands. 

As short lived as that night is, it sets a precedent.

Erwin begins to ask Levi to stay back late nights, waiting for the room to clear out before digging into questions that come from realms the two of them have never entered before- questions about his well-being, his sleeping schedule, strange things that feel intimate because it’s him and it’s Erwin and these are territories yet unexplored. Erwin crosses to him sometimes, sometimes he makes him a drink and their fingers touch and Levi reels so violently inside that he has to glance away, to frown into his glass or swallow down more than he would like to because there is nothing else to do. Erwin is cool, collected, and though Levi fights it he controls their conversations. He guides Levi down paths of talk and then sends him away, warm with drink and irritated beyond understanding. 

Often Levi wants to call Erwin out on it, to look him in the eye and challenge him without pretense. 

_Why do you keep asking me to hang around? Nursing a little crush, Erwin?_

He’s reworked this provocation a hundred times over in his head but it’s no good. It’s pitiful, shameful, but Levi cannot do it because there is the risk of Erwin ending their nighttime sessions, and at some point along this path of being manipulated by Erwin’s kind smile and offers of drinks, somehow, Levi has found himself unable to risk that. Levi catches himself in the mirror sometimes and glares at the idiot staring back. He should start to pull back, should reject Erwin’s requests for his company, but the long-familiar feeling has taken hold and it is too late for that now, to try and regain a sense of power in the relationship. Something had been set in motion the first night after Levi had lost Naila, and it had slipped through his fingers and become this, this all-consuming something. 

*

Tomorrow’s operation looms gravely in the back of Levi’s mind tonight as he toes some of the straw on the stable floor. _We’re planning on big losses_ , had been Erwin’s exact words to the captains, grim but honest, his refreshing blatancy harsher than ever. Assigned an outing commissioned by the MPs, who make heavy requests without understanding what they are asking of the Scout Regiment, they now have no choice but to venture into high-risk territory lest essential funding be lost. 

Levi doesn’t think about death, or maybe it’s all he thinks about. Whichever way it bends, it’s a subject he’s long since stopped considering before each mission, something he’s stopped dwelling on, keeping an eye out for. Things simply are what they are and things happen if they’re going to happen. 

Once he had trembled before outings. The mission after losing Farlan and Isabel he had shaken so hard he’d barely been able to use his blade. But he _had_ used it, and he had used it again and again after that and his hand had stopped shaking eventually, during some mission when he hadn’t noticed. That had been years ago, but here Levi stands in the stables, touching Charlotte and suddenly consumed by the closest thing to fear he’s felt since the beginnings of his long history of blood and battle.

Rooted somewhere at his core is the reason, it would be ridiculous to pretend not to understand the fresh anxiety, the sickening twist of his stomach, the way his heart makes dull sounds in his ears as if he’s about to leap from a great height even though he stands alone in the dark now. The truth stands bare in here, isolated from the busy mess of the daytime, from even the clandestine brush of fingers in Erwin’s office. Here in the stables Levi is truly alone, and here alone he can face what has been true for some time: _if either of us die tomorrow and we haven’t talked about this, it will be unbearable._

“Oi,” Levi mutters, and slips a hand out from under his cloak to feel the black velvet of Charlotte’s neck, strong and dependable. He’s due in Erwin’s office in thirty minutes because Erwin had asked and he had agreed, playing the part of Erwin’s fool. After dinner and before the meeting, though, he had found himself in the stables almost without a thought, drifting out into the cold like a ghost in search of something. He typically avoids touching the horses; as well-groomed as they’re kept, they’re still filthy, but tonight he breathes deeply in the space and presses his fingers against the warmth of her, something solid and alive. 

The idea of Erwin’s death has always been a subject too impossible to touch, too raw to consider, so Levi usually doesn’t. But here in the dark it creeps into his bones, seeps under the cracks in his mind until it is here with him, and suddenly there is another feeling too, a desperate, dark need. It battles the foreign fear and he stands there, touching the horse, eyebrows knit, eyes slipping past the doorway to the night sky beyond, the spattering of stars. He stares at them until some sense of the passage of time grounds him again, tells him it’s time to go. 

As Levi heads out he passes Erwin’s horse, unnamed and marked for death as every horse has been so consigned the moment Erwin decided a name would be too much to handle. For some reason it disturbs him; he doesn’t look at it. 

The walk back, no small distance, passes in a blur as Levi’s heart climbs higher into his throat and his thoughts spin farther from him. They’d been playing at this game for months now, maybe longer, and tonight is the culmination because it has to be; they’d run out of time to fuck around any longer. Something that feels alive twists in his stomach, thrashes up into his chest as he turns the maze of passages in the barracks, making his way for the office door he’s knocked on hundreds, thousands of times, at all hours of the day and night and for every reason. 

Well. Almost every reason. 

_Levi. My office after dinner, if you have the time. I have some things to discuss with you._

Quite the approach. Some small part of Levi pushes back, insists that he cannot give his all to this yet because what if he’s wrong, what if he’s making assumptions too bold, baring himself for no reason but to be humiliated. But against this tide of self-preservation stands the nights spent talking in Erwin’s office, the drinks and laughs and silent moments between them when something had shifted, something had deepened and something beyond lust had been scraped only barely, as if only to remind Levi that he could still feel it. The moments when they’d caught eyes and had both lingered too long and understood that they had, the times when Erwin’s warm fingers had brushed Levi’s slender, cold ones in the exchange of a drink or a paper and the same kind of warmth had erupted in his chest in a way they couldn’t be his alone to feel. He knows nothing about people but he knows about Erwin. He knows about Erwin. 

He knocks and swallows and takes in a breath through his nose but it’s shallow. Footsteps approach from the other side of the room and words jumble in a mad dash to prepare to escape Levi’s mouth but they can’t make it into any kind of rational order in time, so he clenches his jaw shut and forces it down. He will let Erwin lead- he’s been doing it all the while anyway. 

When the door opens Erwin’s ice blue eyes warm at the sight of Levi, unless he’s imagining it, and the corner of his lips twitches into a smile edging just past professional cordiality. They still put on these airs in the hallway; it’s something that both amuses and irritates Levi- the way Erwin refuses to drop into familiarity until they are behind closed doors. Appearances have always meant much more to him than to Levi, and Levi never lets an opportunity to mock him for it slide. Nevertheless, tonight, as he steps in and Erwin closes the door behind him he holds his tongue. He waits for the steeling sensation of his usual guard, the well-used shield to disguise the way his palms are sweating and his heart is hammering too quickly but it doesn’t come, and with a strike of panic comes the realization that while he can handle titans with a brave face he cannot handle this, being alone with Erwin and awaiting words he only dare imagine. 

“Levi,” says Erwin like it’s something to be answered, and already irritation twinges in the pit of Levi’s stomach. 

“That’s my name,” he drawls, relishing his own obstinate refusal to prompt the conversion onwards until Erwin does. 

Erwin huffs a little breath of amusement out his nose, circling back around the desk to clutch the back of the chair, and the beast in Levi’s stomach turns in confusion- touched by the smile he’s brought to Erwin’s face, indignant at the dismissal of his attitude. It’s too much at once, but it always is in this room, with him. 

Erwin’s eyes find Levi again and Levi meets him without difficulty. He can recall the time some faceless subordinate had once remarked on the difficulty to withstand the cold, penetrating stare of the commander. Levi doesn’t laugh but he almost had then, at the misinterpretation of Erwin’s character, of the misunderstanding of his “cold, penetrating” eyes. Erwin is softer than he seems to be, softer than he thinks he is. 

“I just wanted to check in before the mission. Make sure you’re… okay.”

It’s bullshit but Levi lets it be, unwilling just now to toy with him. This is too critical for that. He’s only just entered the room but they’ve already begun to push into the new territory and Levi wills his throat to unclench, his heart to calm enough to hear the words out of his own mouth. 

“Yeah. Well. I’m okay as ever.”

He keeps Erwin’s gaze another moment before flickering away to the desk. He can take it but he can’t give it back, he can’t send the words from his heart through his eyes, _It’s okay, I feel it too, say it, do it, let’s finally say it to each other._

“Right,” Erwin muses, clearing his throat and shifting a paper on the desktop pointlessly with his fingertips. Levi watches the tiny movement, imagines those fingertips against his cheek, his neck, banishes the thought. “And your recruits have all been briefed? Everything is… ready?” 

Levi can feel his eyebrows draw together and he nods once, impatiently. He’d never imagined Erwin as the type to need help with moments like this but he seems as nervous as Levi, as uncertain and exposed and it’s a comfort, as much as he’d like to uphold that he doesn’t need anything of the kind. He swallows and he can feel Erwin watching him but he can’t meet his gaze this time because he knows that his will be too open; holding all of the feeling and the need and the words scrambling to be said, and so he stares instead at the point of contact between Erwin’s fingertips and the desk, waiting for his commander to continue. 

There is a long, still pause, and then Erwin clears his throat again. He removes his hand from the desk. 

“Alright. ...See you tomorrow then, you’re dismissed.” 

Something dark and thick plummets through Levi, from his head to the floor. The ground tilts out from under him and he does look up then, sudden and unguarded. 

“What?” 

In the time Levi’s eyes have been away, Erwin’s face has regained a calm, disinterested expression, now colored by the slightest surprise as he finds Levi staring at him. Levi fights for a semblance of composure but he can’t remember how to, in fact he is quickly becoming lost in the darkness of this fresh feeling, harsher than disappointment. 

“Was there something else you needed?” Erwin offers, salt in the dirty wound, and Levi’s throat dries as any possible response shrivels on his tongue.

“...You asked me to come,” is what he decides on somehow, though he hasn’t chosen the words carefully or well. His mind is numb and he fights the ever-present sinking feeling, resenting more than anything that he is feeling like this, that it is stinging so much more than he could have expected it to. Suddenly his own words feel stupid and he wishes he could draw them back into himself. Instead he watches helplessly as Erwin fields them, maintaining the upper hand, always maintaining the upper hand, assuming the position of the manipulator once more as if they hadn’t spent those nights leading up until now, as if nothing had meant anything enough to warrant Levi standing here expecting a confession of feelings unbecoming for a captain and his commander. 

“Well yes, just to check in. ...Is everything alright?” 

Levi struggles to recall the level of reverence and the sense of mutual respect he had once shared with Erwin, but the feeling escapes him, replaced now with an empty sense of something like betrayal, and he doesn’t want it to be but there it sits anyway, like a bad taste in his mouth. 

Levi nods, once, and mutters a quick “goodnight” as he turns for the door, the pit in his stomach large and dark and swirling. 

His hand is on the cold doorknob when it comes, the sudden and crashing realization, like a lightning strike, that Erwin is not stopping him from leaving and how dare he, _how dare he_ let Levi go like this, and how could Levi think he would leave this room tonight without doing this, without doing something. 

“Why don’t you name your horses?” is what comes out of his mouth and he knows Erwin is startled but Levi does not waver in the question, turning and staring daggers into Erwin’s gentle blue eyes. 

“...What?”

“Why don’t you name your horses?” he repeats, the words slipping from his mouth like poison, like the accusation it is. Levi watches Erwin concede the upper hand without knowing he’s doing it; it happens in the way his Adam’s apple bobs and his eyes flicker back and forth between Levi’s steady ones. It hurts and Levi relishes in this vengeance- if he has to hurt, Erwin has to at the very least be uncomfortable. 

“I… I just never think-...” Erwin begins, dazed, maybe buying time, maybe genuinely confused, and Levi doesn’t care at this point which it is because it is too late to make up for the carelessness, for the way he had teased Levi all of this time only to reveal at the end that it was, in fact, for nothing at all. The bitterness rears in Levi’s head like a stallion, red blinding his vision for a disorienting moment. He speaks again and ignores the dangerous tremor in his voice, unintended. 

“Because it’s not worth getting attached to things that die, right? Am I right?”

The words are vindictive and they come from somewhere even deeper than Levi had intended but there they are, out in the open, and he watches Erwin’s expression change as he takes them in, watches the turning of gears and cogs in his mind as he processes these words, where they came from, what they mean. 

There is a breathless silence in which Erwin’s large, startled eyes search Levi’s for answers, and Levi knows he is looking now for an answer to a question about a feeling Levi has made obvious. Cornered, he has thrown the truth out between them and there is no reeling that back in. _Maybe one of us will die tomorrow and this will only matter for another twenty-four hours._ Erwin’s blue gaze locks onto Levi, asking the question. 

_Is this about us?_

Levi holds it there, spiteful, teetering, not deigning to answer right away. And then he lets his expression soften just enough that he knows Erwin will understand. 

_Of course it is. It only ever has been._

“Levi…”

Levi’s name in Erwin’s voice is weak reaching him, but his voice is just as pathetic when he sends it back across the room.

“Can’t bear to lose a fucking horse with a name?” Levi half-laughs, grim. “Are you that weak?” 

Erwin swallows thickly, taking a moment to compose himself. The silence between them settles into something that feels dangerous, like a loaded gun. 

“I don’t liken you to my horses, if that’s what you’re getting-”

“Then why did you call me in here?” Levi’s chest rises and falls heavier than usual and he resents himself for losing control like this but there’s nothing left to do but lose control. They’ve expended all their allotted time for disguised flirtations and hidden meanings. Levi intends to spit it out as a threat but it comes out far too softly, his voice breaking in the most imperfect place. “Why am I here?” 

The still quiet returns, like the thick moment before a thunderstorm or the charged breath before the execution order is given. Erwin stares at Levi with something unreadable ticking behind those light eyes, something like pained fondness in his face. A flicker of hope stirs in Levi’s chest and he hates himself for it. When Erwin speaks again it is plain, soft. 

“I wanted to see you. I wanted to look at you, hear your voice. That’s all.”

It’s too easy, too vague. Levi scoffs as though his heart isn’t hammering his ribs, as though his stomach isn’t twisting inside of him. 

“For fuck’s sake, Erwin. Spare me the poetry.” 

“I’m serious,” Erwin presses, the slightest edge coloring his words now, some shadow of urgency. “I can’t touch you, so I might as well take-”

“Who told you you couldn’t touch me?”

Levi can’t catch himself in time. This time, when their eyes lock, the light shines on the truth of things, and the ground shakes under them again. The truth- that Levi is here because he would go anywhere Erwin beckoned, because something between them burns too warmly to be friendly, too soft to be anything but love. The truth- that Erwin is as lost as he is, that he had brought him here to look at him, that he can’t say the words that Levi doesn’t know how to voice either. The truth- that they are suddenly rendered boys in this moment, that they feel something too big to know what to do with. 

Erwin’s voice, when it comes again, is too stern to be taken seriously, too forced, and Levi wonders distantly who exactly he thinks he’s kidding, who he thinks he’s talking to. 

“I can’t. I can’t sew seeds that might be ripped out. I can’t afford the cost of-”

“Will you stop with the fucking metaphors?” Levi lets go of the doorknob, grimacing, and Erwin takes in a deep, grounding breath that Levi follows with his eyes as it travels into Erwin’s strong chest, down into his diaphragm, and back out again, where his expression is softening again into one more tender than Levi has ever seen on his stern face. His jaw clenches and unclenches again. 

“It would kill me to lose you,” Erwin says finally, words that sink slowly into Levi as he stands there, dazed, emotional. Erwin shakes his head, small, and says it again, exactly the same, as if there’s nothing else to say. “It would kill me to lose you.” 

The silence hangs between them, and compelled by some greater force Levi suddenly knows it to be his turn, and maybe he’s wrong but fuck it all if he is because he’s already begun to move, crossing the room with the wariness of the hunted. His mouth is dry but Erwin is drowning before him, lost in this, and the words come from somewhere other than his mind as he offers them in a tight kind of voice. 

“Don’t you think,” he begins, and he can barely manage to force the words out above a whisper. “… it might kill you more to never have something to lose.”

He comes to stop a few paces away from Erwin, hands at his sides because he doesn’t know what to fucking do with himself. He waits, and when Erwin says nothing, he finds a few more words for him. 

“I’m not a fucking horse.”

Erwin finds him again, eyebrows knit, eyes calculating but raw, vulnerable. He looks suddenly small, not at all the towering figure of the commander who had opened the door what couldn’t be more than ten minutes earlier. Certainly not the man who has been leading Levi along for months, dropping breadcrumbs and then sweeping them away, flirting and connecting on his terms, at an arm’s distance. Erwin clears his throat. 

“I know.” 

Levi takes him in, and for a brief moment he slips into old habits, familiar defenses rising to meet the moment, weighing the risks. He almost laughs at the absurdity of it all, how readily they ride toward death together, time and time again, but cannot do this. 

“Look at me,” Levi commands, climbing the chain to make such a demand, and Erwin does, he looks, and Levi’s stomach flutters again like he’s a kid, his heart warms like he’s safe. The next words hover in his mouth, tentative for a moment until Levi dabs his lips with his tongue, reminds himself that nothing matters, that nothing fucking matters except maybe this. 

“Touch me.”

Erwin wavers on the edge of breaking, Levi can tell by shadows in his eyes and the catching of his breath, the bob of his throat, and before either of them can think too heavily about this, Levi renders himself bare before Erwin in a way he had once sworn to never do, not for anyone. He closes his eyes and reels against the pull of his better nature, and speaks again into the space without looking. 

“Please touch me.” 

He doesn’t dare to open his eyes, because when he does it will break- this moment in which anything might have happened. For a breathless few seconds the tension is bright and alive, and then, just as it begins to edge into embarrassment, just when Levi begins to wonder if it was a mistake after all, then comes the touch against his cheek, Erwin’s knuckles brushing along the line of his cheekbone. Levi’s eyes flutter open as Erwin’s fingers drift back to his hairline, as he tilts his hand so that his fingertips graze Levi’s face instead of the backs of them, and Levi leans into the touch without a thought. For a moment something, some quip or phrase or some kind of diffusion plays at his lips but he casts it away; it is pointless now. Heart flying somewhere high above him, Levi reaches a careful hand out to touch Erwin back, to brush along the frame of the handsome face he knows so well, never this close but still familiar under his fingertips somehow. When he dares to trail his touch down to Erwin’s lips, to run a finger along the bottom one, Erwin closes his eyes, mouth opening only just, just for Levi. 

Levi sways forward, tugging Erwin down to his level with the breath leaving his lungs, and stops when their noses brush only barely. Erwin’s long eyelashes flutter as he opens his eyes, flickering back and forth between Levi’s. 

“Don’t die tomorrow, Levi,” Erwin breathes, expression knit in pain again, and Levi’s gaze slips up to the tension in Erwin’s forehead. His fingers follow; he traces the shape of Erwin’s left eyebrow with his thumb until his expression relaxes again, and only then does Levi return his eyes to the blues of the commander’s, a swell of tenderness flaring in his chest. 

“It’s not tomorrow yet,” he breathes back, and Erwin swallows once, slowly, before brushing his thumb along Levi’s jaw once more and finally, finally drawing him in. 

Erwin kisses more gently than Levi would have expected of him, slow and careful, edging on indulgent. Every preconception of what this should be floods from Levi as he kisses back, abandoning his own typical edge for this instead, this sweet tenderness, simple and raw and emotional. They hold each other in the spot, in the middle of Erwin’s office, kissing slowly like they have all the time in the world to do this.

Erwin tastes faintly like mint, clean and sharp and familiar, and when he pulls away as if to say something Levi is slipping his hand up again to graze a finger along Erwin’s lips, more flushed than usual from the drag of them against Levi’s. He knows what Erwin wants to say and he speaks instead, before he can. 

“We can talk about what this means tomorrow night, after we come back alive.” 

Erwin considers this for a moment, considers Levi himself with gentle eyes, and he’s barely begun to nod in agreement before Levi is kissing him again, stretching onto his toes to reach. Erwin tilts down to meet him, and there is a deeper urgency this time, a stirring in Levi’s chest and a staggering jolt like lightning at the first brush of their tongues. 

They kiss there for a long time, simple and sweet and defiant, a fight against the looming threat of tomorrow and the tomorrows to follow if they make it through the next one. The darkness presses in from outside but it doesn’t quite make it in because for now, just now, they are in Erwin’s office, warm together, kissing gently. Outside, their horses are alive.

  
  
  



	9. "Wash"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you to Z for the word prompt! This one really quickly turned into one of my favorites, they deserve more moments of peace, huh <3 Also content warning- this one is probably the most NSFW so far, so keep in mind as you proceed! Hope you enjoy :)

It takes a good amount of political maneuvering to convince the higher-ups not to keep sending their medical staff over, but Levi manages to bluntly deflect their insistences until they give it up. The commander of the branch losing his arm had been a less-than-ideal situation, sending the useless bastards at the top into a frenzy. They were the type who had never seen a day of battle but loved to send young soldiers into the field to die, and suddenly apparently knew better than the Scout Regiment in regards to treatment for a kind of wound they’d only ever had sympathy nightmares about. All kinds of physicians with their rudimentary, experimental treatments had been thrown in Erwin’s direction, and Levi and Hange had stepped up to ward them off as Erwin had healed in his bed, nearly comatose and unable to stand up for himself. 

“He would hate this attention if he was awake to see it,” Hange had sighed at one point with a wipe of the brow, as if they’d just run laps around the barracks. Levi had rolled his eyes in general irritation, watching the retreating backs of the third set of Sina-issued medics that week. 

“I wish he’d get up off his ass so we could get back to business.” 

Levi had said things like that often throughout the first week of Erwin’s recovery, but he’d meant less than half of them. The truth, secret thing that it was, was that he had been glad Erwin was getting a break, and all the better that he was unconscious throughout it. Erwin had been long overdue for a good stretch of unconsciousness. 

Throughout the week Hange had come and gone and Levi had found himself pretending to while doing nothing of the sort. Childish as it was, he had been ashamed of himself but not enough to return to his own quarters, opting to remain pathetically perched at Erwin’s bedside around the clock. _In case any of the doctors come back to prod him_ , he had told himself with such blatant mendacity it was embarrassing, repeating it like a mantra even once they’d all retreated back to Sina, long past the point of being able to pretend it was a viable excuse. 

It’s love; he knows that much now though he can hardly admit it to himself. Erwin knows it by now, though they’ve never said it out loud. They’ve never needed words, those useless words; it’s been over-proven time and time again in the glances they share, the way they talk and the way they kiss, the nights they’ve spent together. Levi resentfully admits that he is probably proving it again now as he waits by Erwin’s bedside for a week, occasionally reaching out to trail his fingertips against the sharp angles of Erwin’s handsome face, slack in rest. 

The days blur around the edges until they are melting into each other, and Levi thinks it’s maybe been two weeks but maybe it’s only been one- maybe it’s been a month. When he finally manages to devote enough energy to count it’s just in time, because on the evening of the eleventh day, Erwin wakes up. 

It starts small, with the kind of slight stirring he’s been performing for days. Levi glances over to see him shift around in the fresh bed sheets like usual, jaded to the process but watching anyway. But then Erwin keeps moving, and then he’s sighing, and then he’s tilting his head up and suddenly his eyes are open. At the sharp reminder of their color, beautiful and eleven days missed, Levi’s breath catches in his throat. 

Before him lies a ghost of the man who had tied his own tourniquet with his teeth and one arm, the commander who had screamed orders without so much as a falter as his eight pounds’ worth of his body was ripped away from him. Now Erwin’s pale blue eyes flicker around the room, lost like a child’s. Levi is at his side before he can drown in the disorientation. 

“Morning,” he jokes lazily as the sun sets out the window, voice cracked from disuse, but when Erwin’s gaze finds him and locks on, relief blossoming behind his eyes, Levi is unable to keep the joke alive. A swell of affection floods his chest, an emotion rare but stronger than the fear that had accompanied the initial injury and the exhaustion of the eleven days after it. Erwin reaches out feebly and Levi meets him halfway, finding his hand in the space between them and lacing their fingers. Erwin is warm and the contact is overwhelming. 

“Took you long enough,” Levi manages and Erwin smiles in a pained way, closing his eyes and swallowing thickly. 

“Water?” Levi offers, faltering only slightly at the sight of Erwin struggling in a way so uncharacteristic, so unbecoming of him that it edges on disturbing. 

“Please,” comes the answer, low and raspy, and Levi slips free of Erwin’s weak grip to cross to the other end of the room where his own glass of water sits on a tiny wooden table. The room is heavy with quiet and Levi wades through it to return to Erwin’s side, grimacing with sympathetic pain as the commander winces to reach out and take the cup. 

“Easy, Erwin.”

Erwin glances up again, the barest twinkle of something like watered-down amusement deep behind the pain in his eyes. It’s a phantom of his old spirit but it’s familiar enough to bring a gentle kind of reassurance. Levi watches Erwin tilt his head back to drink, throat bobbing as he gulps it down, probably more than he should but Levi doesn’t stop him because there’s no way to when he looks so desperate. Erwin finishes and looks suddenly lost without a place to put the glass. Levi’s face burns with the strangeness of it; Erwin is suddenly again like a child. He finds himself caught between pity and embarrassment, and reaches out to pluck the glass from his uncertain grip. 

“Let me,” he says, and when their fingers brush again his heart spikes into his throat. How long had it been since they had really touched each other? Crossing back to the table to put it down, he thinks unwillingly of the first night when they had laid him out in this bed and he had thought he might never touch Erwin again. Something sticks in his throat and the embarrassment melts away.

“Levi,” Erwin says, small, and when Levi turns around Erwin is half-reaching, fingers twitching in the open space, as if he thinks Levi is about to turn tail and head out the door, as if he hasn’t slept here in a chair for the past ten nights. 

“Give me a damn second,” Levi replies without an ounce of animosity, and returns to Erwin’s bedside. It’s hard to say whether or not it’s the shaft of dying sunlight streaking through the window, but Levi thinks privately that Erwin’s eyes are bluer than he has ever seen them. He takes Erwin’s remaining hand again in the same way as before, and as he moves to sit Erwin is already shifting to make room for him, like they had both decided at once that Levi would be joining him here. The bed creaks and it is quiet again, nothing but them. 

Their eyes meet again and something heavier settles around them, an intimacy that had been missing until now. Erwin’s eyebrows are drawn into a complicated expression, a little stoic, a little pained. 

“Hi,” Levi says stupidly but because he feels like he needs to, and the smile it brings to Erwin’s lips is worth the embarrassment of saying it. 

“Hi,” Erwin says in response, simple and soft. 

It’s still for another moment before Erwin raises Levi’s hand to his mouth, planting a slow, languid kiss against the back of it. A lump settles into Levi’s throat and his heart hammers hard to life, and when he parts his lips to say something the words leave him. Instead he watches as Erwin freckles the back of his hand with gentle kisses, then turns it over to give the same treatment to the sensitive inside of his wrist in a way that makes his heart ache and his mind blur.

“I should be giving those to you,” he remarks with false carelessness, and when Erwin looks up again Levi makes a note to never take the blues of his eyes for granted again. Erwin releases Levi’s hand to cup his face in a new contact that is more overwhelming than the first. His thumb appreciates the ridge of Levi’s cheekbone, sliding slowly across it one way and then back again. 

“I missed you,” Erwin murmurs quietly, and Levi scoffs, if only half-heartedly. 

“I’ve been here. You’re the one who’s been sleeping all hours like a damn princess.”

Erwin’s lips tug up into the slightest smile, and Levi is suddenly overwhelmed by the impulse to kiss him until neither of them can breathe. He forces it back; Erwin fights a wince with each tiny movement. 

“How badly does it hurt?” Levi asks bluntly, knowing Erwin won’t be able to bullshit him out of the answer because he never can.

“It’s fine,” Erwin replies too off-handedly, lying with a boldness, and Levi withdraws from his touch. At first Erwin’s eyes widen in false surprise, but, finding Levi’s critical stare and considering it a moment, he swallows and shifts his gaze to the window in concession. 

“Badly.”

It’s the answer Levi had been waiting for, but suddenly he is helpless in response. He draws in a sharp breath and frowns at Erwin’s pillow, then slowly drifts his gaze across the strong chest to the other side where the bloody bandages tangle around the stump of Erwin’s shoulder. His heart drops cold into his stomach and he feels ridiculous for it, as if he hadn’t known what he would find at Erwin’s other side. Still, the dull panic of being without a solution pangs through him, clatters around in his chest uselessly. Erwin is too brave for his own good, bearing more pain than Levi has ever seen him in with relative dignity, and Levi is helpless here at his side. He is finally awake and for his eleven days of waiting there is nothing Levi can do. 

“I’m sorry,” he says without meaning to, and Erwin’s head turns sharply so he can pierce Levi right where it counts with the familiar edge of his blue daggers. 

“Why?” Erwin prompts with a genuineness and Levi shifts irritably, heat rising to his face as he glances back out the window, feeling Erwin’s eyes on him all the while. 

“I don’t know, Erwin, because you’re all fucked up now, I guess.”

He turns back to find Erwin wide eyed for a quiet moment, and then, to his irritation and relief, Erwin laughs, a low, warm sound that unhinges something unexpected in Levi, some deeper emotion that strikes sudden and hard and brings pricks of tears to his eyes.

Levi does dip down then- he can’t help but to- and catches Erwin off guard in the middle of a laugh. He captures Erwin’s lips with his own, breathing in deeply through his nose and pressing into him before drawing back with his mouth half-open against Erwin’s- hovering there just to feel the brush of their lips together, just to remember how this feels, savoring the sensation, the taste of him. 

“Levi,” Erwin breathes against his lips and Levi shuts him up with another kiss that turns into another and another and then a hundred little ones, pressing into the corner of Erwin’s mouth and then his jaw, his temple, his hair. Levi plans to continue this until he can get enough of a grip to stop the burning of tears in his throat and eyes, but then Erwin is reaching out to take his wrist, gently, the pad of his thumb pressing against that soft underside again. He murmurs Levi’s name until Levi has no choice but to draw back, a tear dripping down his cheek as he does. 

Levi rolls his eyes when Erwin’s expression shifts at the recognition of the tears, and huffs in indignation when Erwin reaches up to brush at the wetness with a careful knuckle. 

“Levi,” he begins again, tender, and Levi bats his arm away gently.

“You say my name a lot,” he counters, and resents his own voice for the way it sounds, tight with emotion. Their hands find each other again without looking, locking together against the bedspread like they’re meant to be. They sit in this lingering quiet for a long moment, holding onto each other like children, studying each other’s faces. 

It’s been a long time since they’d last been romantic in the way they had when they first broke the years-long tension that night in Erwin’s office, falling into each other and pulling their clothes off with a desperation Levi had never felt before then. Over time the demand of duty had begun to interfere far too much, cutting chunks out of their time together so they were forced to live off of subtle brushes of fingertips in briefings, quick kisses before bed and pathetic groping in supply closets. It hadn’t been enough but they had made it enough anyway, or at least Levi had thought it had been. Sitting here, now, studying the stubble against Erwin’s strong jaw and the bow of his lips, the color of his eyelashes and the curve of his eyebrows, Levi wants to kill the past versions of them for settling the way they had. 

He’s going to say something about it, though there aren’t any good enough words in his mind, but then Erwin is speaking, shattering the moment with far less grace than Levi could have ever anticipated. 

“I stink, don’t I?” 

They catch each other’s gazes in a quiet moment of registration, and then Levi snorts, brushing his thumb along the back of Erwin’s hand. 

“I wasn’t going to say anything about it, but yeah. You’re disgusting.” 

The twinkle is back in Erwin’s eye and Levi could never admit the way he would do anything to keep it there. 

“You kissed me anyway.” 

Levi rolls his eyes for the third time in the conversation, scoffing as Erwin’s fingers tighten their hold on him slightly.

“Couldn’t tell you why.” 

“I could,” says Erwin, and when Levi turns back to him it’s to find an expression caught somewhere between mischief and genuine gratitude; whatever it is, Levi’s constitution is regrettably no match for it, so he deflects the emotion, clearing his throat.

“You want to do something about that, or are you gonna roll back over and fall asleep again in your own filth?” 

“You’re harsh, Levi,” Erwin sighs, shaking his head a little, and the fondness swells to bursting in Levi’s chest. He pretends not to feel it, withdrawing his hand from Erwin’s and standing again. Erwin rubs at his tired eyes and breathes in deeply, like he’s trying to remember how to. Blinking up at Levi with his long, pale lashes, he clears his throat. “I think I’d like to… to take a nice, long bath.” 

Levi twitches an eyebrow up but nods in approval. Not only would it help the whole stinking situation, but watching the stiff, mechanical way Erwin is stuck moving, he thinks it could only do good to soak his joints somewhere warm.

“I think that’s one of the better ideas you’ve had. ...want me to start one for you?” Levi makes the offer as an afterthought, prompted by the vision of an unbalanced Erwin struggling to turn off the tap by himself. 

Erwin seems to consider the extension for a moment, eyes darkening as he stares at the end of the bed. Cogs turn, slower than his usual pace, but suddenly something clicks into place and he looks up at Levi again with a fresh determination in his voice. 

“This is embarrassing, but- could you help me… stand?” 

The agreement that it is, in fact, embarrassing, dies in Levi’s mouth as he takes in Erwin’s expression- genuine shame edges the lines of his face, makes his eyes flicker to the side instead of up to meet Levi’s. Levi’s heart hurts in that certain way again, plummeting through him for the fiftieth time. 

“You’re an idiot if you think that’s embarrassing. You lost your arm, for fuck’s sake.” 

It’s harsh but it does the trick; Erwin draws in another deep breath that seems to shake it off. He meets Levi’s eyes with a grateful gaze, tugging off his covers with visible difficulty. 

“You’re right. Thank you,” he says sincerely, and Levi shrugs it off with a little shake of his head. 

“Not every moment has to be meaningful, you know,” he dismisses, but he’s grateful for the way Erwin looks at him. No one else looks at him like that. When Erwin moves to push himself upward Levi jerks a hand out to catch Erwin’s good shoulder in a firm grip. 

“Oi, oi, not so fast. If you think we’re not getting someone to help you’ve lost your mind along with your arm.” 

Levi’s half-turning to go when Erwin’s fingers close around his wrist, catching him in time and holding him to himself, to the place at his shoulder where Levi is anchored. 

“Don’t. Please. I don’t- ...want some stranger in here,” Erwin manages with some difficulty, a touch of the humiliation creeping back into his voice. Looking down at him in this state suddenly feels wrong; despite the years of fight for dominance in their dynamic there is a strange, disturbing twist that comes with Erwin’s docility now, and Levi breaks in the face of it. 

“Okay, okay-” he promises quickly, and Erwin releases his grip on Levi’s arm. Despite Levi’s agreement he looks defeated. Erwin stares at the foot of the bed, and Levi watches as his remaining arm, adorned with shallow scratches, thin red lines, angry, drifts across himself. Erwin turns to look at his own shoulder, ghosts his fingers along the bandages, and Levi sits down again, silent but watching. 

“This is going to take some getting used to,” Erwin murmurs, and Levi says nothing but reaches out a hand to take hold of Erwin’s thigh. He presses into him, just enough to make it known that he’s here. 

“You’re gonna have to call me into your office every time you need to write a letter. Or get off.”

The smile that graces Erwin’s features as he turns back to Levi, bare as it is, is a reward. Levi stands before Erwin can thank him like he’s working up to do, sighs. It’s black outside the window now; the light had changed in a sneaky way, without their noticing. The candles are dim but warm, and from this angle the light plays off of Erwin’s features in a way that’s almost angelic, gilding his strong nose, his handsome jaw. 

“Let’s get you to the damn bath already,” he drawls, and he is helpless against the fond coloring in his voice so he lets it in. What’s the point anyway, of pretending not to feel this way about him when they both know they’re in love. Erwin looks up at him, exhaustion and gratitude sharing a space in his expression. 

Getting him to his feet proves to be the most difficult- Erwin, once a pillar of strength and constitution, is all aches and pains now, trembling and sucking in sharp breaths of pain through his teeth when Levi gets him to a full sit. But he does, and Erwin stands, and after an unsteady moment on his feet he seems to stabilize, not by any act of his body but through the determination in his mind and the pained expression on his face. Never has their height difference been so evident as in the walk to the bathroom, Levi walking along at Erwin’s side completely uselessly. If their positions were reversed Erwin could carry Levi if it came to it; if Erwin collapses Levi knows he’ll be unable to keep him upright. But Erwin manages to make it without incident, slow as he is, trailing his left arm along the wall with Levi’s fingertips ghosting his waist. Luckily they encounter no one, saving Erwin the face Levi knows he would feel lost were a young recruit to turn the corner and find their commander struggling to walk like a child. 

The officers’ communal lavatory is empty, and once they’re in and Erwin comes to a stop with his hand braced against the wall behind the tub, Levi locks the door in direct violation of the open-door policy. 

“You shouldn’t, the rule states-”

"Fuck the rule,” Levi dismisses with a jerk of his hand, sliding the little metal tab into place and turning around again. “This is an extenuating circumstance.” 

He makes his way back over to Erwin, who’s smiling again a little bit again, and tips up onto his toes to kiss him, the lightest press of their lips together. He lowers down again and reaches up to tug gently at Erwin’s shirt, already half-unbuttoned so it exposes the familiar scars on his chest. 

“Off,” he commands, and then, defeating his own order, takes to unbuttoning the rest of it before Erwin can even begin to attempt it. 

“Thank you,” Erwin murmurs, watching Levi work at the little things. Levi takes the barest moment to appreciate Erwin before he pushes the shirt off the side of his good shoulder, first taking in the cut of his obliques, the muscles tight under the scarred skin, marks that tell stories, some of which only Levi knows. Warm skin, familiar skin he had been lost without touching. 

“What is it?” Erwin asks softly, and Levi blinks up at him, eyebrows knit despite himself. 

“Nothing. I missed you.” 

Erwin is the one who tilts down this time, carefully so as to not lose his already precarious balance. He presses a kiss against Levi’s forehead, and Levi closes his eyes into it, focusing hard on the feeling. 

“Alright, enough. We don’t have all night,” Levi says as if it’s true, clearing his throat free of the emotion beginning to clog it up. 

It’s a process to be certain, but together they maneuver the fabric off of Erwin, careful around the stub of his arm. Levi tosses the shirt into the corner in distaste and Erwin watches it go with a weak protest. 

“Levi, don’t make a mess-”

“It’s one fucking shirt, Erwin.”

Levi’s hands are at the edge of Erwin’s pants, beginning to undo the buckle, but Erwin’s hand finds his two, halting him in the process. 

“I think I can handle this part,” he says in a falsely strong voice that begs allowance and Levi doesn’t need to consider this to understand that it’s a matter of dignity. He nods once, momentarily shifting back into Erwin’s subordinate, and turns to prepare the water, leaving Erwin to finish undressing himself. 

Levi turns back around as the water is heating, unable to curb the impulse enough to ward it off. He drinks in the sight of Erwin unclothed, leaning against the wall with his pants clutched loosely in hand, eyes shut and heavy eyebrows drawn as if he’s focusing hard on willing the pain away. He’s like a sculpture, every part of him, and Levi takes in the sight with a gratitude that is staggering, a sharp pang in his heart reminding him of how close he had been to never seeing Erwin again. 

“It’s ready,” he says when it is, pulling Erwin out of his reverie. He watches Erwin cross to the bath, conscious not to intervene until it’s clear he’s needed, which proves to be the moment in which Erwin has one leg in and one out. Levi grips the strong bicep of Erwin’s left arm, steadying him as he climbs the rest of the way in, gravely serious in his duty to keep him on his feet. 

Erwin sinks into the water with a deep sigh, closing his eyes as the steam rises around him. Levi doesn’t realize he’s still gripping Erwin’s arm until the crystalline blue eyes find him, eyebrows bumping up in polite suggestion. 

“Oh,” Levi says stupidly, letting go. Erwin’s mouth tips into a slight smile and he tilts his head back, grip tightening on the edge of the basin. Unsure of his purpose now but unwilling to leave just yet, Levi crosses to the far corner of the room to retrieve the shirt he had cast away before. When he turns back around Erwin’s bloody shoulder is far too close to the water for comfort. 

“Be careful-!” Levi warns through gritted teeth as Erwin sinks further yet into the bathtub, the surface reaching his underarms. Erwin opens his eyes and Levi rolls his, crossing his arms across his chest. “For fuck’s sake, I can’t leave you for two seconds.”

“Then don’t,” Erwin says softly, shifting a little so that he can crane his neck to look at Levi. The water ripples outward and across to the other side. 

“Fine,” Levi agrees hotly, snatching a chair pressed up against the wall and dragging it towards the side of the tub. Halfway there he doubles back to the flimsy shelf with a sad array of products, plucking a glass bottle of hair wash and a clear jar of liquid soap from the top before returning to Erwin’s side. 

“Let’s not forget that the whole point of this is that you smell,” he huffs, sitting the containers down on the floor before tugging the chair up to the side of the tub, the left side where Erwin’s arm is still draped across the thin porcelain edge. 

Erwin frowns a little, glancing down over the edge at the little collection of soap. 

“I hadn’t thought about- this is going to take some getting used to,” he muses, almost to himself, and a streak of something like pity jolts through Levi’s chest. 

“No shit,” he says, but he stands, tugging his jacket off to Erwin’s apparent surprise. 

“Coming to join me?” Erwin suggests, half-jokes, and Levi rolls his eyes as he drops the finely pressed suit jacket over the back of the chair. Erwin’s eyes follow the motion and he snorts a little laugh. “Oh, I see, so my shirt gets catapulted across the room but your clothes get civilized treatment?”

“Your shirt was filthy and eleven days in need of a wash,” Levi counters flatly without missing a beat, plucking open the top few buttons of his dress shirt and freeing himself of the cravat, placing it neatly over the top of the jacket. He rolls up his sleeves under Erwin’s watchful and curious eye, tugging them past his elbows. “Just shut up and relax. I’ll take care of it.” 

Erwin falters for a moment as if he’s about to ask _of what_ , but seems to think better of it with one firm look from Levi. His eyes close and he tips his head back again, exposing the vulnerability of his throat, the fine lines of his neck muscles defining with the movement. Levi bends down to retrieve the hair wash, tapping the container against his palm until a modest amount of it plops out into his hand. It’s simple smelling- clean and fresh. He hooks the toe of his shoe under the legs of the chair and draws it behind him, sitting once it’s positioned behind Erwin. With the hand free of product he dips into the steaming water, the sensation traveling up his arm and warming his whole body. For a moment he does play out the option of climbing in, feeling that water up to his neck, but he dismisses the thought quickly. He is not here to relax. 

He lifts the hand of cupped water to the top of Erwin’s head, tipping it so that it trickles down and begins to wet the frazzled blonde hair.

Erwin sighs and shifts just slightly, tipping his head back into the touch, and Levi continues, again and again until Erwin’s hair begins to bleed into a dirty blonde instead of its normal haystack color. Once it’s properly wetted, Levi smooths his palms together, coating them with the hair soap, and wastes no time returning the attention to Erwin’s hair, slipping his fingers in and beginning to scrub until he grazes the scalp beneath. 

Erwin makes another contented sound and Levi deepens the contact, turning scrubbing into massaging as the soap froths around his hands, proof of it working, cleaning away the near two-week’s stagnancy in a matter of seconds. When Levi’s fingers drift to Erwin’s temples Erwin makes a sound so he stays there, rubbing small circles into the spot until Erwin is sighing under his touch, tilting his head only just as if searching for firmer contact. 

“You don’t have to,” Erwin mumbles at some point, but Levi ignores it, scraping his nails in the same pattern again and again, pressing into the base of Erwin’s skull and sliding back up again to his temples until the half-hearted assurance is dead on Erwin’s lips, which part halfway in the bliss of the moment. Levi smirks a little in satisfaction, the visible response to his touch more than enough of a reward to continue. His stomach twists with the same sort of satisfaction, pairing with the swell in his chest again, pure adoration. It’s a feeling that had been foreign to him before Erwin; a lot of feelings had been. He leans forward until his chest touches the rim of the tub and the back of Erwin’s head grazes his collarbone, to slip his hands into the water again, rinsing them clean of the frothy soap. The closeness of Erwin’s neck beside his face is too sweet to ignore, his familiar scent catching Levi by surprise and tugging at his heart in a way that’s almost painful. He tilts his head only slightly to press his lips against the warm, wet skin in a way he hasn’t done in god knows how long. Erwin comes alive beneath him, breathing his name, and he dabs his tongue against the spot before planting another kiss there, slow. Erwin’s hand finds the back of Levi’s head in an attempt to hold him there but Levi reaches up to withdraw it from himself, water dripping down into his sleeve. 

“Levi,” Erwin repeats, sounding a bit breathless, and Levi huffs out his nose. 

“Tch. Don’t tell me you’re getting all excited,” he taunts, unimpressed, but the truth is that his heart in his throat and a long-lost curl of heat is alive in his stomach. “Sit up,” he says coolly, as if Erwin is the only one feeling it, as though he has any more constitution than the commander does. 

Erwin scoffs a little but he also obeys, shifting to sit so that the water spills off of his shoulders and down his well-defined back. Steam rises off his skin like he’s cooking. 

There’s a small pail that’s usually kept off to the side of the tub- Levi cranes his neck to find it still there, and stretches to lift it from its unceremonious spot on the ground. He dips it into the water and pours it over Erwin’s hair, and Erwin tilts his head back for better access in response, clearly wanting to make it easier for him. Slowly, methodically, Levi manages to wash all the soap from Erwin’s hair until it’s clean, plastered to his forehead like he’s a little boy again. Levi doesn’t realize his mouth has found its way into a tiny smile until Erwin is tilting his head all the way back, looking straight up at him, reaching up to graze his knuckles against Levi’s cheek and mirroring his expression. 

“I think you’ve smiled more tonight than I’ve seen in all of our years of service together.”

“Shut up,” Levi responds, batting Erwin’s hand away and back into the water, but it’s the truth. He moves to the other side of the bathtub to pluck the thin container of soap where he had left it, tipping it into his hands and slicking them with it. It’s a new scent, faintly lemon but not overwhelmingly so. 

“I can wash myself, you know,” Erwin remarks mildly from where he sits in the tub and Levi’s face heats to his irritation. He turns around with a frown, bottle still in hand. 

“Really? Because if I recall correctly you just had me shampoo your hair like a child.”

“It felt good,” Erwin responds simply, his shoulders half-rising in a little shrug. Levi doesn’t realize that he hadn’t been expecting such an honest response until it comes, and for a moment he’s at a loss for a response. He settles on one after a moment, hands suspended before him, covered in soap. 

“Do you want me to go?” 

Erwin looks across the space, his gaze steady and kind. Grateful. He shakes his head slowly. 

“No, Levi.”

Levi huffs, crossing back over to his chair. 

“Thought so.” 

Erwin leans back against the tub again and into Levi’s waiting hands, which slip across the broad back and shoulders, rubbing soapy circles into the tight muscles. It’s like kneading rock, and Levi draws a sharp breath in through his nose when his fingers slide against a knot to the right of Erwin’s shoulder blade. 

“Shit, what is wrong with you?”

Erwin chuckles at the harshness. It’s a low, sweet sound. “I don’t know, it’s almost like I’ve been lying in a bed for a week after being torn to pieces.” 

“Almost.” Levi rolls his eyes and Erwin laughs again, though he’s facing away. His shoulders move with it, and without really thinking Levi slides his hands under the water, down to Erwin’s sides, framing his ribs to catch the laugh before it disappears completely. Erwin cranes to look at Levi, his hand dropping past the surface and across himself to cover Levi’s right one where it clutches onto his side. 

“Hey,” he breathes, and the gentleness touches Levi right at his core, as if suddenly Erwin is the one taking care of him. 

_Hey_ , is what Levi tries to say, but when he opens his mouth it comes out differently. 

“I love you.”

The sentiment that has Erwin sitting up in the bath again, rising out of Levi’s grip. Levi sits there at the edge of the tub, his hands resting on the edge of the basin, and now Erwin is facing him, his eyes soft and lips parted in surprise. Levi’s breath catches in his throat and he is suddenly exposed with nowhere to back off to, no excuse to hide behind. He frowns a little, bites the inside of his cheek and glances away and back again. Erwin is still for a long moment, his boyish hair dripping down and plunking into the bathwater, and Levi stays there too, refusing to shirk away from his own admission. And then Erwin’s expression solidifies, strengthens, and his one warm hand emerges from the water to cover Levi’s as he looks up at him. 

“I love you too, Levi.”

“I don’t know why I said that,” Levi responds quickly, irritably, frowning as though he hadn’t put himself in this position in the first place. His cheeks are warm again, from the bathwater or this or both. 

“You don’t need a reason,” comes Erwin’s tender response, and Levi suddenly struggles to meet his gaze. “Maybe just… because it’s true? Isn’t that enough?”

Levi fights to form a response but no words feel good enough, so instead he says, “Lean back again, we’re not done. You still stink.”

“Do I?” Erwin smiles, unmoving, and there’s the barest twinkle in his eye, one that tells Levi just how much he understands that Levi is trying to deflect, to change the subject. Erwin can’t bullshit Levi but Levi can’t bullshit Erwin either, and they both revel in this understanding for a frustrating moment, Erwin entertained and Levi less than. 

“Lean back,” Levi repeats drily and Erwin’s smile grows a little before he follows the command.

Cheeks a little warmer than usual, Levi nudges his sleeves up again and tips more soap into his palm. They fall back into silence as he returns to this self-appointed work, pressing his thumbs into the warm, slick skin of Erwin’s back, grateful to be touching him, grateful to have unbroken skin to touch despite the part of Erwin now missing, mind still buzzing in the wake of their admissions. 

_I love you I love you I love you too._ Their two voices play on loop in his mind, swelling him with dizzy affection. 

Levi works his way up Erwin’s neck, kneading the hard muscle around his spine, tight from years of untouched tension, the weight of hundreds of lives. He abandons the soap in moments in favor of chasing the knots, pressing into the tender places to relieve the burden, if only just- it’s all he can do. Erwin is quiet again but Levi knows him too well not to pick up on the signals, the small sighs and shifts that guide him to new spots, pressing here and there until Erwin relaxes into his touch. When he finds a place under the left shoulder blade that draws a small breath Levi works into it hard, then slips his hands up to Erwin’s shoulders and leans forward to press his lips against the nape of Erwin’s neck, reveling in the sensation. 

“Levi,” Erwin breathes, the word that leaves his lips the most frequently, and in response Levi kisses again, and again after that, making his way down the ridge of Erwin’s spine until the basin will not allow him to go farther, and it is only then that he straightens up. Erwin leans back against the rim so that the back of his head brushes Levi’s chest and Levi’s hands slip forward, down Erwin’s front until they press against the firm ridges of Erwin’s hipbones, strong lines cut into his skin. Stomach curling hotly and head suddenly swimming with a sensation that has been buried stress for weeks, Levi dares to slide his right hand further yet until his rolled up sleeve dips into the water, until he brushes between Erwin’s legs in a way that is slow and deliberate, his fingers trailing along the familiar shape there, finding him hard. When Erwin draws in a sharp, shallow breath, Levi does the same, a thrill of electricity darting through his chest. It dies quickly and he withdraws his hand, fingertips trailing back to the chaste safety of Erwin’s hip. 

“Sorry,” he mutters; here Erwin is in his weakest, most vulnerable state and here Levi is groping him like a perverted schoolboy. When Erwin speaks again, however, it is not what Levi is expecting. 

“No,” is the response, in a voice so affected it stuns Levi to silence for a moment. Erwin opens his eyes and lifts his head up from the rim of the basin, craning his neck to find Levi’s gaze. There is new color to his cheeks, a soft glow, and his eyes are gentle but pleading in a way that borders on uncharacteristic. “...Levi.”

These two words are all Levi needs. Stomach fluttering and heart thudding into his chest like a hammer, Levi shifts himself so that he can better lean in, pressing his lips against Erwin’s more gently than he can remember doing in a long time. They kiss slow, savoring each passing second, and it is only after a minute of this that Levi slips a hand back into the water, trailing along Erwin’s chest and down to his tensing stomach, fingertips taking their time on their way. Erwin makes a vulnerable sound and Levi dips his tongue into their kiss, stomach twisting in pleasure when Erwin parts his lips for him. 

He finds his way between Erwin’s legs again and begins to touch him in a way that feels both distant and familiar, like this type of love is reserved for the people they had been two weeks ago, when Erwin had possessed both arms and they had taken everything for granted. Perhaps that is why it is all the more overwhelming now when Erwin reaches blindly out to clutch the side of the tub, teeth grazing Levi’s lip as he loses his composure in the kiss, drawn away by distraction. Possessed by a force dark and hungry, Levi takes to Erwin’s neck instead, planting open-mouthed kisses against the steaming skin as his hand works in the water, drawing sounds from Erwin far easier than ever before. 

Historically Levi has always been the one to break easily, to be reduced embarrassingly quickly to a state of discomposure, but it is Erwin tonight who melts into Levi’s touch, biting back groans even as Levi coaxes more out of him. Levi ignores the tightness in his own pants as he finds the shell of Erwin’s ear, dabbing his tongue against it, breathing senseless words of encouragement that evoke moaned responses. 

This time when Erwin manages Levi’s name, tight and desperate sounding, it sends a surge of heat through Levi’s body and mind, overcoming him with the way it turns in his stomach, stirs his thoughts into a blur. He sends Erwin’s own name back to him in response, increasing his pace and slipping his thumb up to graze a spot of sensitivity that has Erwin gasping and releasing the rim of the bath to find Levi instead, clutching at Levi’s hair and drawing him closer yet. Levi returns to Erwin’s mouth, kissing deliberately in a way he knows Erwin can’t keep up with in this state, mouthing “ _come on_ ,” against Erwin’s lips and mirroring every breath, every sound until Erwin finally, finally breaks, gasping as the release seizes his body. Levi rides it out with him vicariously, scattering messy kisses against Erwin’s exposed throat as he gasps out Levi’s name one final time. 

Levi releases his gentle hold, sliding his warm hand back up to Erwin’s jaw, grazing his cheekbone under his closed eyes. Erwin turns his head with incredible leisure, blinking his eyes open to find Levi’s in a way that makes Levi’s heart leap as if they’re suddenly locking eyes for the first time all over again. Resentfully overcome with fondness Levi leans in and kisses Erwin again, simple, sweet. Erwin’s hand finds Levi’s face too, warm and wet and soft. 

“Thank you, Levi,” he murmurs when they part, and Levi grimaces. 

“Don’t be so formal about a handjob.” 

Erwin laughs again, the low, sparkling sound that tumbles Levi’s stomach around despite his resistance to it. He gives in this time, sitting back and letting himself feel it without criticism, letting himself be grateful for the way Erwin makes him feel this and the way he’s still around to do it. 

“Alright, get out of there. It’s disgusting.” Levi gestures to the now-tainted bathwater after a moment, already scanning the room for towels. He finds one in the corner; it’s not exactly clean and pressed but it’s hung up at least, an outlier from the slump of them on the floor, ready for laundry. He brings it over as Erwin stands, and together they pat him down, Levi’s presence somewhat redundant until it comes to Erwin’s arm, in which case it turns out he needs more than a little help. 

Getting him dressed again is quite the process as well. Levi can think of a thousand separate instances in which, in looking back he can finally admit he had needed assistance, and Erwin had chided him for his stubborn refusal of it. Now their roles have switched, Erwin mumbling assurances that he can handle it and then failing again and again, first to button up his shirt, to clasp his pants, to tug the left sleeve back onto himself. It isn’t until Levi lifts up onto his toes and catches one of Erwin’s stupid insistances with another kiss, pressing into him until he’s quiet, that he concedes. Levi does the rest of the work while Erwin thanks him unnecessarily, again and again. 

“Erwin,” Levi huffs when it becomes ridiculous, impatient, but when Erwin’s darkened expression fails to lighten he tries again with a new tone, gentle and kinder than his usual form allows. “ _Erwin_.” 

Erwin finds his eyes and Levi reaches out to take the commander’s warm hand, lacing their fingers together in that same, familiar way. 

“You might be completely fucking useless right now, but you’ll figure it out.” 

The barest smile graces Erwin’s handsome features but annoyance twinges in Levi’s chest; it isn’t enough. 

“Hey,” he urges, tightening his hold on Erwin’s hand. “ ... _We’ll_ figure it out.” 

For a moment Erwin holds Levi’s gaze and something shifts behind the calculating blues of his eyes, and then his smile firms into something concrete. 

“...Thank you, Levi.” 

In lieu of an answer, with the front of Erwin’s shirt Levi tugs him carefully down into one last kiss, lingering and sweet, and then they head out the door together, back down the dark hall, the candle a distant memory as they make their way in the dark. 

The room is as they left it, black and grim-looking. Levi helps Erwin clamber back into bed, holding the covers up and away to aid in the process. He lowers them back down over Erwin’s form once he’s resting against the headboard, left hand messing with the bandages around the harsh cutoff at his right shoulder. 

“Don’t play with it,” Levi warns, frowning through the dim light to Erwin, who looks up like he’s almost startled, as if he hadn’t even realized he’d been doing it. 

“It’s just… bizarre,” Erwin concludes weakly, the most incredible understatement. He’s beginning to look small again, so Levi juts in, tucking his arms across his chest and setting his frown with even more conviction. 

“What, that you need me to wash your ass for you now?” 

It’s obviously a joke but Erwin can’t seem to bring himself to treat it as one this time, because when he looks up at Levi his face is devoid of a smile. His shoulders bump up into the tiniest shrug and he huffs a breath out of his mouth, a humorless half-laugh, before swiping a hand down and across his weary face, albeit scrubbed clean now. 

“Yeah.”

It’s quiet. Levi considers this harsh truth for a long moment, and then he nods a little. With nothing else to say, he echoes the sentiment back. 

“Yeah. I know.” 

He sways on the spot, considering if it would be in Erwin’s best interest to take this as a cue to leave now, to turn on his heel and wish a curt goodnight so that Erwin could sit alone with his emotions instead of adjusting them for Levi’s spectation. He moves but instead of back his feet carry him forward, until he’s at the headboard. He reaches out a gentle hand and tenderly drags his fingers through Erwin’s damp hair, the faint scent of lemon drifting up to him pleasantly. Erwin stirs barely underneath his touch, and he rakes his fingers through slowly, again and again after that. 

“I’ll do that as many times as it takes. Until you’re better.” 

The words feel cliché as they come out, and sound to Levi less than genuine despite the way he means them, but before he can add anything to make it better Erwin reaches up and catches his wrist gingerly, bringing Levi’s hand to his mouth to press a kiss into the back of it. 

“I love you,” he murmurs with his eyes closed, lips ghosting the skin of Levi’s hand, and the words are as beautifully striking as they had been the first time, half an hour before. Levi wonders if they will always hold this power, and thinks they probably will. 

“I love you too,” he responds, quiet and simple and without having to think about it. “And we’re going to make sure you’re okay.” 

“...Okay,” Erwin echoes, blinking up at Levi with smiling eyes and sounding for the first time like he almost believes it. 


End file.
